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DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK + BOSTON - CHICAGO - DALLAS © 
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MACMILLAN & CO., LimiTED 
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TORONTO 


DIP PAUL KNOW ) OR VTHE 
VIRGIN SL 


AN ane 16 i 
HISTORICAL STUDY \, Ke = 
LOL ogigai. ge 


By 
THE REV. BISHOP RICHARD J.’COOKE, D.D., LHD. 


NEW YORK 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


1926 
All Rights Reserved 


Copyright, 1926, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
Set up and electrotyped. 
Published September, 1926. 


Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORE 


TO THE REVEREND BISHOP 
Adna Wright Leonard, D.D., S.T.D. 


Wise Administrator and 
Faithful Preacher 
of the Word 


PREFACE 


Of the many problems which arise in a critical study 
of the New Testament the silence of St. Paul and other 
New Testament writers concerning the virgin birth of our 
Lord is not the least perplexing. From the very first the 
virgin birth was one of those many questions which 
created division in the primitive Church, and at the 
present time it is the occasion of much questioning, not 
only among biblical scholars, and by the scientific mind in 
general, but also among many Christian believers whose 
belief in the Lord Jesus as the Son of God does not depend 
upon their conception of the mode of his entrance into 
human history. 

In the literature of the subject it is generally assumed 
that the silence of St. Paul, of St. John, of St. James and 
other New Testament writers, like Mark and Jude, is 
unanswerable proof that the fact of the virgin birth was 
unknown to the first generation of Christians. For, with 
the exception of two evangelists out of the four, Matthew 
and Luke, there is no mention of such an extraordinary 
event as is related by these writers in the entire New 
‘Testament. 

Typical of these statements is the following: ‘The 
virgin birth was apparently unknown to the primitive 
Church, for the earliest New Testament writers make no 
mention of it. Paul’s letters do not allude to it, neither 
does the Gospel of Mark. The Fourth Gospel, although 
written much later, ignores the belief in the virgin birth.” 
Thus also numerous other monographs and encyclopedias: 
“That which is unknown to the teachings of St. Paul, 
St. John and St. James and our Lord himself and is absent 

7 


8 PREFACE 


from the earliest and latest Gospels, cannot be so essential 
as many people have supposed.” 
A recent writer in a monograph of marked worth says: 


Viewing the passages [citations from Paul’s Epis- 
tles] as a whole we must conclude that not only is 
St. Paul completely silent as to the virgin birth but 
that he is silent just where his silence is most difficult 
to understand; if he knew of the traditions. . . . 
They [Paul’s Epistles] permit us to appreciate how 
much St. Paul knew of the words and deeds of Jesus 
and the events of his earthly life. That they reveal 
no knowledge of the virgin birth is hardly to be 
explained by a policy of silence. Unless on other 
grounds it can be shown that the tradition was 
known in apostolic circles during St. Paul’s lifetime, 
his silence must be interpreted to mean lack of knowl- 
edge concerning it.? 


Thus it seems that the question whether New Testa- 
ment writers knew of the virgin birth is really of much 
more importance than is generally supposed, not only with 
reference to doctrine, but also as to the credibility of the 
record in the First and Third Gospels. The apostle Paul 
builds a Christology apparently without any knowledge 
of the facts recorded by Matthew and Luke, and many 
sincere ministers of the Word at the present time, in whose 
thinking this subject has large place, believing that the 
Incarnation of the Son of God was not conditioned by the 
manner in which it was realized, are confirmed in this 
belief by the silence of the apostle. This attitude is not 
without effect also upon those who deny the divine nature 
of Jesus Christ, regarding Him in all respects as solely 
human, yet superior to all men because of his nearness to 


*Vincent Taylor, The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth, 


PREFACE 9 
God. It is easier to think of Him as purely human, and 
that his birth was solely of human origin, than it is to 
conceive of the Infinite coming into time and space. 

Others seem to think that if the Lord Jesus is reduced 
to the common level of humanity it makes approach to 
his likeness much easier, ignoring the new problem which 
immediately arises, namely, how such a purely human 
being could have arisen at all out of the soil of humanity. 
The ages before Him never produced such a man, nor have 
the ages since. 

To many others it is important to know whether the 
apostles who preached a gospel which historically was 
based upon facts, as they affirmed, did really know that 
the Christ they preached came into the world in the way 
that the evangelists, Matthew and Luke, who wrote his 
life, declared He did, that is, in a supernatural manner. 
Students of history have long since learned that there is 
a distinction between historical facts and the manner of 
stating those facts, and that in answer to the question, 
what is history? one might well reply, that depends on 
who writes it. 

To the average reader of the Scriptures it seems very 
plain that if the virgin birth was the faith of the primitive 
Church in Jerusalem, if the narratives of that birth were 
contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke at that 
time, that is, before the destruction of Jerusalem, then it 
becomes the strangest of the strange, a problem without 
solution, that no trace, not even the slightest, of such 
knowledge should be found in the writings of any of the 
apostles, the first teachers of the Church. 

Nor will it satisfy the inquiring mind to fall back upon 
the argument from silence unless some reason is given for 
the silence. Not every argument from silence is a valid 
argument. In any case, silence proves nothing. Certainly 
it does not prove that an event which is not mentioned did 


10 PREFACE 


really occur. On the other hand, silence is no proof that 
the affair never happened. 

But here the case is different. We have in this instance 
not one writer only but several, and all living at the same 
time, in the same country, and all intensely engaged in 
the same calling of preaching the same Person, his life, 
his teachings, his death and resurrection, preaching con- 
cerning one whom they believed to be the Son of God 
who became incarnate for the redemption of the race; and 
yet not one of these writers gives the slightest hint that 
he has any knowledge of the supernatural character of the 
birth of Him whom they preached. 

The importance of the subject is apparent moreover 
from the viewpoint of the reliability of the Gospels in 
which the narratives are found. If Matthew and Luke 
incorporated in their Gospels mere myths originating in 
Babylonia, or “‘old wives’ fables,’’ as the apostle Paul in 
ridicule termed them, or if they so colored the biography 
of Jesus with their own pious reflections on what accord- 
ing to the spirit of the time in Christian circles it was 
thought must have been present in the life of Jesus, but 
which had no foundation in historical fact, then it cer- 
tainly follows for many that their absolute confidence in 
the reliability of the evangelists, Matthew and Luke, must 
be greatly modified. 

It is not yet certain, however, that, as Harnack thinks, 
the “‘tradition of the birth and childhood is shattered’’— 
nor do we believe that Christian faith can be divorced 
from historic fact. Christianity is an historical religion. 
It does not rest upon ideas, but upon facts. Its ideas or 
teachings are derived from the facts, and that difference is 
as great as the one between reality and transient notions. 

This then is our task, to prove as far as the nature of 
the case will permit from the evidence of the New Testa- 
ment, despite all that has been urged against it, that St. 


PREFACE 11 


Paul and other New Testament writers did have knowl- 
edge of the virgin birth of our Lord as recorded in the 
Gospels of Matthew and Luke. 

It is quite probable, of course, that the evidence here 
offered may be regarded by deniers of the virgin birth as 
purely circumstantial, and its sufficiency thereby ques- 
tioned. Should such objection be made it will be neither 
surprising nor conclusive. This objection will be raised, 
probably, on the ground that the evidence here presented 
is not demonstrative. But such objection would mean 
that no evidence in questions of this character is admissible 
except such as would practically be evidence impossible to 
obtain, that is, mathematical demonstration. Now, we 
admit if that evidence which inevitably creates a moral 
certainty in the mind and which no straight reasoning can 
destroy is to be set aside because it is not demonstrable 
evidence according to any exact meaning of the word, then 
our task is hopeless; there can be no solution of the ques- 
tion. Everyone knows that were such demand to be 
applied in everyday life, it would destroy the validity of 
morally certain evidence in thousands of cases in human 
affairs. If we were compelled to adhere as closely as all 
that to exact, inelastic proof, nothing, the contrary or 
opposite of which in the face of demonstration is con- 
ceivable, could be scientifically demonstrated. 

If we affirm this to be so, then we must enlarge the 
boundaries of this severely exact definition of the term 
“‘demonstration.”’ For on the basis of this narrower defi- 
nition in present use, every branch of human knowledge 
except the exact sciences must be cast aside if this objection 
is valid. That two plus two equal four is demonstrable 
because it is not conceivable that they can equal any other 
number. In chemistry similar illustrations abound. But 
geology is not an exact science, nor is political economy, 
hence their propositions are not demonstrable. History 


12 PREFACE 


does not deal with the demonstrable, it would seem, for 
contrary fact is often conceivable in its field. To state it 
boldly, it is not ‘demonstrable,’ for example, that our 
Lord rose from the dead on the third day, since it is con- 
ceivable that He might have risen at some other time, in 
some other way, or that He did not rise at all. Hence 
the numerous theories of his resurrection invented by 
deniers of the supernatural. 

But the intellectually honest inquirer who discerns be- 
tween things that differ will perceive that theological, 
historical and philosophical truths are not susceptible of 
demonstration by the apparatus employed on mathematical 
or material facts. History cannot be verified in that sense, 
since to verify is to repeat, which history never does. In 
the nature of things, theological and historical truths must 
depend for their support solely upon moral certainty. 
What demonstrative proof is there, for example, that 
Caesar fell at the hands of Brutus and his fellow conspira- 
tors? Or what do we know of Solon the lawgiver? 
Diogenes and Plutarch are our chief writers concerning 
him. But they lived, the one seven, and the other eight 
hundred years after him. 

That evidence which is otherwise competent, satisfac- 
tory and cumulative cannot be set aside as insufficient, nor 
its strength impaired, by characterizing it as this side of 
full demonstration, in order, if possible, to lessen its prob- 
able value; for it is this kind of evidence which is univer- 
sally relied upon in the ordinary affairs of life. It may 
at times be more convincing than direct testimony. 

It does not appear to be necessary to say much more 
by way of preface to the following pages, since the purpose 
and program of the writer are now evident. But it will be 
well, however, to draw attention expressly to the fact that 
the subject here discussed is not the virgin birth of our 
Lord itself, but the silence of St. Paul and other New 


PREFACE 13 


Testament writers concerning it. It is necessary to empha- 
size this lest our purpose be misunderstood. Whether the 
birth of our Lord occurred as related by Matthew and 
Luke or not, in nowise affects the question. Was such 
the belief of the primitive Church in Jerusalem? And 
did Paul know that it was? Whether the narratives are 
true, or whether Paul believed in the virgin birth, is wholly 
beside our inquiry. The simple question before us is, 
did Paul know that such was the belief of the Church in 
Jerusalem? This and this only is the question we are 
to consider, 

The observing reader will doubtless soon note that the 
validity of much of the evidence in proof of the position 
taken by us depends in some measure upon an early dating 
for the Synoptic Gospels. But this is not wholly the case. 
As may be readily seen by a glance at Dr. Moffatt’s Intro- 
duction to the New Testament (page 213), the date 
chosen will probably be questioned. But before it can 
be refuted the monumental work of Adolf von Harnack 
in his series, Luke the Physician, the Acts of the Apostles, 
the Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels, must be 
destroyed. Much effort, of course, has been and will be 
expended to modify the conclusions of Harnack, but if 
one already acquainted with the literature of the subject, 
including Dr. Headlam’s Criticism of the New Testament 
in his Margaret Lectures, Von Soden’s History of Early 
Christian Literature and C. H. Turner’s exhaustive article 
in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, will read Harnack’s 
volumes through again, the author may be forgiven for 
predicting that opposing critics will no more be able to 
destroy the results of Harnack’s labors than the wooers of 
Penelope were able to bend the bow of Ulysses. 

And yet, while apparently much stress is placed by us 
upon the dates given to the Gospels by Harnack, the valid- 
ity of the argument here presented does not depend upon 


14 PREFACE 


the accuracy of Harnack’s conclusions. It is just this 
effort to fix the dates when the Gospels were written in 
order to account for the origin of the belief in the virgin 
birth that gives rise to so many difficulties. This method 
of approach to the problem is, we think, an entirely wrong 
method. The belief of the primitive Church in the 
miraculous birth did not originate in, nor was it created 
by, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, for it is self-evident 
that there must have been some belief in existence con- 
cerning the matter in the Christian community before it 
became a matter of record, unless we are to say that both 
Matthew and Luke, each independently of the other, in- 
vented the story. The degree of probability that this 
could have been so we may safely leave to the judgment 
of impartial criticism, for the possibility is remote indeed 
that two writers, neither dependent upon the other and 
both professing to relate a most sacred fact in the life of 
our Lord, should have invented the same fictitious event. 

Both derived their information from a common source, 
the belief of the Church. Both differ in detail from each 
other only so far as each obtained his facts from different 
authorities within the Church—Matthew probably from 
Joseph, the putative father of Jesus, and Luke from Mary, 
the mother, or close intimates in the circle in which the 
traditions were treasured. 

It may not be out of place, perhaps, to express the hope 
that this little book may be helpful to some inquiring soul 
in the twilight of faith, and that it may by its appeal to 
candid reason dispel the faintest doubt of the historicity 
of the birth of Jesus affirmed in that article of the Apostles’ 
Creed which in the hush of the holy Sabbath multitudes 
of the faithful recite in Christian worship. 


Radic, 


CHAPTER 


I. 
Le 


CONTENTS 


PREGAGE tec cave Heenan tole tas ha aabhg eae els & 7, 
ERAMET AV eax DELLE uct el home a ee er aaia es 19 
OBJECTIONS: 2. .'-03 PAPAS oA EA dtaveswaeior sere 49 
MISINTERPRETATION -. ore: cjereseieeee es rk ee 80 
INTERPOLATION Ai wees Port A bette 48s 9] 
PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH...... 101 
BINA Pee VIDENCE 20M chim. sero tN uw mata 124 


DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


CHAPTER “I 
PRIMITIVE BELIEF 


From the earliest beginnings of the Christian Church 
until the present time, belief in the virgin birth of our 
Lord has been held in common with other articles of 
Christian faith. The first question, then, underlying all 
other questions in our inquiry is, How did this belief 
originate in the Christian Church? 

Every belief has a beginning. Every belief is related 
to a time and a place—to a when and a where. We know 
when and where, and often by whom, certain dogmas 
originated which history shows to be corruptions of the 
primitive faith, We know that the doctrine of Papal 
infallibility was first declared to be a dogma in 1870 A. D.; 
that the doctrine of purgatory was established by the 
Council of Trent in 1563 A. D.; that Transubstantiation, 
first suggested in 831 A. D., was not declared a dogma until 
the Lateran Council in 1268 A. D.; we know the origin 
of these and many other additions to the early faith of 
the Church.».But when and where did this doctrine of 
the virgin birth of our Lord originate? 

_ In his thoroughgoing work, The Apostolic Age,? Carl 
Von Weizsacker, referring to the primitive belief in the 
Jerusalem Church concerning Jesus, says: 


The belief that his descent was natural long con- 
tinued to hold its ground. It showed itself in the 
compilation in the genealogical tree, which itself 
belongs to the second generation, and in the unhesi- 
tating mention of his father (Matthew xiii. 55). 


_ 4Vol. I, p. 19, Eng. Trans. 
19 


20 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


Not even the doctrine that He had been conceived 
by the Holy Ghost, a doctrine which although it 
originated in another age yet arose as the final result 
of the thought of his equipment with the Spirit, 
could displace the older view of his parentage. 


This eminent scholar, however, does not state in what 
“other age’ nor in what year of that other age, nor among 
whom in that other age this doctrine originated. We 
know when belief in the human parentage of Jesus was 
asserted and by whom it was believed, which was when 
He began his public ministry. But when did the belief 
in his divine parentage arise? 

If we shall be able to settle these elementary questions 
it will narrow down the discussion to a somewhat more 
definite time and place; and this will enable us to eliminate 
much that is irrelevant. Our knowledge that the belief 
could not have arisen at any other time than the time 
discovered in our researches will serve to isolate our study 
from many other questions and render more certain our 
conclusions. 


Paul’s silence is easily accounted for, if belief in the 
virgin birth did not exist in Paul’s day. He could not, 
nor could other New Testament writers, have known any- 
thing about it. If it did exist, then he was as likely as 
other men to have known of it. All other questions, such 
as whether it was true or false, pass immediately beyond 
the rim of this discussion as wholly irrelevant, the only 
question we are interested in being, Did Paul know of it? 


In order to set before our minds some clear conception 
of this subject of the silence of St. Paul concerning the 
virgin birth of our Lord, it is necessary to see some facts 
connected with the beginning of the Christian Church in 
which this belief had its origin as they really were. For 
if we confine ourselves solely to critical discussions on 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF OM 


Greek texts, or to the conjectures of philologists on MSS. 
and various readings, or to the hypotheses, subjective 
notions and foregone conclusions, more confusing than 
illuminating, of negative criticism, we shall never arrive 
at a satisfactory conclusion. This is evident from the fact 
that even if all that may be alleged from different readings 
in old or newly discovered Greek and Syriac MSS. were 
admitted for the sake of the argument to be true, without 
stopping to check up concerning the origin of those texts, 
or whether they had been tampered with or not, still the 
unassailable, self-evident fact would remain that the belief, 
whether true or not, was in existence before those texts 
existed. Moreover, those texts do not answer the vital 
question, How did this belief originate in the Christian 
Church? 

Before we are reddy to reach 4 conclusion upon any 
subject, the first question to be answered must always be, 
What are the facts? To construct history according to 
a preconceived theory, to force facts to fit the theory, or 
to set aside opposing witnesses as unreliable, may be con- 
venient, but it is not scientific. Facts come before theory. 
Nor should each fact or event be considered in isolation, 
for a part is not the whole, but each fact should be con- 
sidered in the light of the whole story if anything like an 
approach to the truth, rather than the confirmation of a 
particular theory, is our goal. 

It is only in the degree that we are able to throw our- 
selves back into the religious and social life of that early 
day without letting go of the vantage ground of the pres- 
ent, and become ourselves, as it were, members of the 
Church at Jerusalem and share in the activities, hopes and 
experiences of the Christian community there, that we 
shall be at all able to get beyond the bare, scrappy letter 
of the record in the Acts of the Apostles, or to understand 
in any clear way the beginnings of Christian doctrine and 


ZZ. DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


of those divisions and heresies which we find later spread 
out full grown before us on the pages of history. For as 
the historian, Parkman, observes: 


Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far 
more than a research, however patient and scrupu- 
lous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed 
with the most exactness, and yet the narrative, taken 
as a whole, may be unmeaning and untrue. The 
narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and 
spirit of the time. He must study events in their 
bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, 
and manners of those who took part in them. He 
must himself be, as it were, a sharer, or a spectator 
of the action he describes,? 


Any logical inquiry, therefore, into the silence of St. 
Paul in regard to the birth of Jesus from a virgin, must 
first begin with two fundamental questions. 

I. What was the belief of the apostolic Church in 
Jerusalem from Pentecost to 70 A. D.? 

II. Did Paul know the belief of that Church? 

We must begin at just this particular period for the 
reason that the origin of the virgin birth cannot be dated 
as late even as the close of the first century, since at that 
time it was already a doctrine universally preached, as we 
learn from the Epistle of Ignatius (110 A. D.) and the 
Apology of Aristides? (126 A. D.). Nor can it be 
assigned to the period between 70-100 A. D. for the reason 
that the narrative of the birth had already been read pub- 


2 Pioneers of France in the New World, Intro. 

%“'The Christians,’’ writes Aristides, ‘‘derive their origin from the Lord Jesus Christ. 
This Son of God Most High is acknowledged in the Holy Spirit, having descended from 
heaven for the salvation of men; and having been born of a holy Virgin, without seed 
and purely, he assumed flesh and appeared unto men that he may recall them from the 
error of polytheism and having finished his wonderful dispensation, through the cross 
he tasted death through his own will, according to the great dispensation.” 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 23 


licly in Christian communities long before that time, from 
Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels.* 

We are driven, therefore, and necessarily so, to seek its 
origin in the apostolic period, for there is no other period 
to which it can belong—in those years between the begin- 
ning of the Church at Jerusalem and the flight of the 
Church from Jerusalem at the approach of the Roman 
armies (66 A. D.)——in those years when the apostles were 
dwelling yet in Jerusalem, years crowned with the events 
and persons of the great leaders of the primitive Church 
who flit before us in the Book of Acts. 

This important fact, to begin with, seems firmly estab- 
lished on historical ground. W. C. Allen, in his Com- 
mentary on Matthew, says, ““The date furnished by the 
Gospel itself seems best satisfied if we suppose that its 
author compiled it within a period of a few years before 
or after the fall of Jerusalem in A. D. 70.” 

Alfred Plummer says, in his Commentary on Matthew, 
“Therefore, while we hardly place the Gospel as early as 
65 A.D., we can hardly place it as late as 75 A.D. And 
on the whole a little after 70 is rather more probable than 
a little before.”’ 

Professor Sanday in his Bampton Lectures on Inspira- 
tion is of the opinion that ‘“‘The great mass of the narrative 
in the first three Gospels took shape before the destruction 
of Jerusalem, within less than forty years of the events,’’® 
events,’’® 


We are now ready to consider the first question: What 
was the belief of the primitive Church? 


Our first glimpse of the Church in Jerusalem is on the 
day of Pentecost. On that day the Christian Church was 
created. In the city a million people crowded the narrow 


*See Harnack, Date of the Gospels and Acts, 
5p. 283 


24 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


streets. “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, the dwellers 
in Mesopotamia and in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus 
and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in parts 
of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers from Rome, Jews 
and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians.’’? 

In a house well known to the apostles,® the disciples of 
Jesus had met and, as had been their custom for some 
time past, were engaged in prayer for the fulfillment of the 
promise made to them by their risen Lord.® In this com- 
pany also, it will be observed, the entire living family of 
Jesus were present. ‘“These all continued in prayer and 
supplication with the women, and Mary, the mother of 
Jesus, and with the brethren.’’*° With the apostles and 
disciples, Mary the mother was also engaged in prayer for 
the power of the Holy Spirit promised by her Son. With 
them she also took part in the prayer to Jesus in the elec- 
tion of a successor to Judas Iscariot in the apostleship. She 
was one with that company in their experiences, belief and 
expectations. 

This is our first glimpse of the origins of the Church. 
The historian Luke then relates that: ‘“When the Day of 
Pentecost was fully come there came suddenly a sound 
from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and it filled all 
the house where they were sitting, and there appeared unto 
them cloven tongues like as of fire and it sat upon each 
of them and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’ 
Upon the head of Mary, as upon the others, quivered the 
cloven tongues of fire. It “‘sat upon each of them.’’ She 
too was to testify, the cloven tongues symbolized, as were 
the others, and with them she too was “‘filled with the 
Holy Ghost.” 


®See the footnote in Milman’s History of the Jews, Bk. XVI, Vol. II, p. 387. 
T Acts ii. 8. 

8 Weizsicker, The Apostolic Age, Vol. I, p. 21. 

© Acts i. 8. 

10 Jbid., i. 14. 

D Ibid. i. 14. 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 25. 


Various attempts, which it is not necessary to refute, 
have been made to explain away this supernatural phe- 
nomena. Wernle in his Beginnings of Christianity, a work 
in which one would expect exact discussion of the tremen- 
dous events which ushered in organized Christianity, 
wholly ignores Pentecost.1? Weizsacker regards Luke’s 
historical statement as “‘clearly an imitation of the sym- 
bolical legends told by the Jews of the proclamation of 
the law.’’4® But whatever may be the explanation, or the 
corresponding form of denial, one thing is absolutely cer- 
tain, something happened. No criticism can obliterate the 
fact of Pentecost from the beginning of Christianity. The 
Christian Church is still here. It began sometime, some- 
where, somehow. Every effect certainly must have a 
cause, and every cause must be equal to the effect, and the 
origin of the Christian Church must be accounted for on 
these two principles. On that day human history was 
cleft in twain. The old world passed away, the new was 
born. On that day the Christian Church began its long 
history. It came out of “‘concealment,’’ as Weizsaicker 
terms the period of waiting for the “‘promise of the 
Father,’”’ into the open; and the apostles ‘‘preached Jesus.” 

The immediate result of this preaching was the begin- 
ning of the growth of the Christian Church. Multiplied 
thousands" accepted Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. ‘‘And 
they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and in 
breaking of bread and in prayer.’’ For two or three years, 
that is, until the death of Stephen, the apostles and the 
disciples continued their work in the city, “‘signs and 
wonders” accompanying their preaching. Finally, priests 
and Levites began to be influenced by the extraordinary 


Even.the word ‘‘Pentecost’”® is not in the index to his two volumes, 

13 The Apostolic Age, Vol. II, p. 25. 

14 Weizsicker denies this by simply stating on his own authority that the figures 
that represent the growth of Christianity are artificial (Vol. I, p. 24). But see Har- 
nack’s Expansion of Christianity, Vol, II, 


26 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH?, 


teaching of these new prophets, and thousands of the peo- 
ple led by their example were converted to the new faith. 
The situation became increasingly alarming to the Sanhe- 
drin. Jesus of Nazareth, the “‘crucified,’’ was about to 
capture Jerusalem, the center of Judaism. It seemed to 
the chief rulers at that critical moment that a political and 
religious necessity was laid upon them, “‘lest the Romans 
come upon us and destroy our nation,’”’ to crush out at 
once this expanding heresy. Persecution began. 


Saul, an ardent patriot and devoted zealot in the faith 
of his fathers, was then a resident in the city, and stung 
by the success of the new faith, he took the field and ‘‘made 
havoc of the Church.”’*> ‘The disciples scattered by him 
“went everywhere preaching the word.’ But the apostles 
remained in the city.1¢ 


What was the public teaching of the apostles? What 
was the distinctive instruction given by them during these 
years in forming and establishing the belief of those Jewish 
Christians who constituted the primitive Church in Jeru- 
salem? It is not necessary here, for it does not belong to 
our subject, to enter the domain of New Testament the- 
ology and examine each distinctive doctrine in apostolic 
Christology in its later development. It will suffice to 
point out that the sermon of Peter on the day of Pentecost 
may assuredly be taken as the keynote to the whole body 
of preaching and teaching that followed and became among 
the Jerusalem Christians the standard of belief.17 This 
distinctive, fundamental teaching was contained in the 
phrase “‘Jesus and the resurrection.”” ‘“This Jesus had God 
raised up whereof we are all witnesses. Therefore being 
by the right hand of God exalted and having received of 
the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed 

15 Acts viii. 3. 


3° Tbid., viii. 4. 
1 Ibid., ii. 43. 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 27 


forth this which ye now see and hear . . . therefore let 
all the house of Israel assuredly know that God hath made 
this same Jesus whom ye crucified both Lord and Christ.’’18 

Whoever would give more than superficial study to this 
entire subject should consider with utmost care the relation 
of this definite affirmation of belief in the supernatural 
character of Jesus to the belief of this same primitive 
Church in his supernatural birth. One may, if he so 
choose, deny, with such writers as Bousset,!® Schmidt?° 
and Pfleiderer,?4 that a truly divine nature was attributed 
to Jesus by the apostles and the first disciples, or with 
Beyschlag that any such teaching appears in their several 
writings in the New Testament. So cautious a scholar, 
however, as Bernhard Weiss”? may be taken as representa- 
tive of the best critical thought on this particular subject. 
He shows that in calling Jesus “Lord” He is pointed to by 
those disciples not only as the Lord of the theocracy of 
believers, but also named simply ‘‘the Lord,” as only 
Jehovah himself beside is named. The Messiah who is 
exalted to this Lordship must, of course, be a divine 
being.** Stevens of Yale also expresses clearly the view 
which is generally held by conservative New Testament 
scholars, that ‘“‘in view of the Septuagint use of Lord as a 
name for Jehovah it is difficult to see how a Jewish mind 
could attach to the Lordship which ascribed to Jesus any 
meaning not implying his superhuman character,’’24 

Beyschlag, it is true, endeavors to break the force of 
such judgments by putting emphasis on the thought that 
Jesus was not essentially divine, but had that status con- 

%8 This sermon of Peter's is in theological agreement with John i. 14. Peter desig- 
mates Jesus as ‘‘a man approved of God,” but also as “Lord’’; John portrays Him as 
5 aang Logos, and also human—He ‘‘became flesh.” 

»” The Propher of Nazareth. 

1 Early Christian Conception of Christ, 

72 Biblical Theology, Eng. Trans. 


33 Tbid., Vol. I, p. 180. 
4 New Testament Theology, Eng. Trans. 


28 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


ferred upon Him by his exaltation: “God has made Jesus 
Lord, viz., by exalting Him to his right hand; if the name 
Lord had the meaning of eternal Deity that expression 
would be impossible, for to be made and by eternal nature 
to be are mutually exclusive terms.”’”® 


This gifted theologian, however, seems to have missed 
the thought of Peter. He fails to note that Peter is con- 
trasting the earthly condition of Jesus lately crucified with 
his present position on the throne of God. As Meyer cor- 
rectly interprets it:?° “Previously He was indeed likewise 
Lord and Messiah but in the form of a servant; and it 
was after laying aside that form that He became such in 
reality’; that is, actual possessor of the Theocratic King- 
dom. The Messianic character, however, and the divine 
nature of Jesus involved in it are not in any sense an acqui- 
sition. Perhaps it should be said that in a recent work, 
The History of Dogma, Professor Seeberg agrees with this 
stand taken by Meyer, and clearly states that in Jesus who 
was made Lord of the Kingdom was essentially the divine 
nature. This he says was made plain to the disciples by 
his resurrection. Henceforth they recognized Him not only 
as the divinely chosen Lord of the historical theocracy but 
as the Son of God in the sense of the only begotten of 
God, as John i. 18 is to be read, the Son of God codrdinate 
with the Father and the Spirit.” 

Further light on the teaching of the apostles is manifest 


2% J, Estlin Carpenter in his work, Phases of Early Christianity, p. 65, observes, 
“Soon after the destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70, Jews in Egypt, men and boys, 
suffered death, refusing to call Caesar ‘Lord,’ because they held that title to God alone,” 
and refers to Josephus, Wars, VII, X, 1. Cited also by Deissman, Light from the 
Ancient East, p. 359. 

% See Commentary on Acts ii. 36. 

37 “‘Den Menchen Jesus hatte Got erwahlt zum Messias oder Gottessohn. Aber dieser 
Mensch hatte fur sich eine Herresschaft in Auspruch, die uber das Méessianische 
hinausging. In ihm war géttliches Wesen. Diese wurde den Jungern in der Gemein- 
schaft des Auferstandenen klar. Hinfort erkennen sie in ihm nicht nur den Messias 
als den gotterwahllen theokratischgeschtlichen Gottessohn, sondern dem himmelischen 
Herrn, den Sohn Gottes in sinn des Theos Monogenes wie John i. 18 zu lessen ist 
den Sohn der mit dem Vater und dem Geist Kooriniert ist’’ (p. 63). 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 29 


in the fact that converts were baptized ‘‘in the name of 
Jesus for the remission of sins.” Peter, and John with 
him, declared Him to be God’s Son, God having raised up 
his Son Jesus.’’28 The teaching of the apostles is echoed 
in the preaching of Stephen who bears testimony before 
the Sanhedrin to the common faith of the disciples: “‘Be- 
hold I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man stand- 
ing on the right hand of God.” 

Now Paul, it should be carefully noted, had heard of 
this faith daily from the Christians in Jerusalem. At the 
trial of Stephen he heard the same belief expressed, and 
immediately after his conversion he himself preached this 
doctrine in the synagogue at Damascus, viz., that Christ 
‘is the Son of God.’’?® 

This primitive Church is a Jewish Church. While, as 
we learn from the Book of Acts, there were thousands of 
Hellenic Jews dwelling in Jerusalem, that is, those Hebrews 
who had come from foreign countries as distinguished 
from those who were natives of Palestine, it must not be 
forgotten that they all were Hebrews. Though they had 
lived among the pagan peoples in Egypt or in Persia, in 
Mesopotamia or in Rome, in Cappadocia or in Arabia or 
Crete—wherever it might be that they had resided—they 
were still Jews, uncontaminated by the habits and customs 
of the heathen. They had remained devout and faithful 
to the traditions of Judaism and zealous for the laws of 
Jehovah. Those who have gone afar into distant lands 
often show more reverence and love for the sacred scenes 
and associations of the religion of their fathers than do 
those who continue to live amid the shrines of the early 
faith. To those stay-at-homes, by reason of their famili- 
arity with holy things, even the temple itself might have 
become commonplace. So these Hellenic Jews were often 


38 Acts iii. 26. 
* Ibid., ix. 20. 


30 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


more intense in their religious devotion to the laws of 
Moses and in their hatred of the idolatrous nations round 
about them, as witness the case of Paul himself, than were 
those who had not learned contempt for paganism in 
foreign lands. 

There are no foreign influences at work here. No 
heathen legends of the birth of gods and heroes are known 
or at least accepted among these Jewish Christians. It is 
exceedingly important in our study that this should be 
carefully observed. Otherwise the impossibility that a 
heathen myth should originate among Jewish Christians 
cannot be fully appreciated. Schurer,*® on the authority 
of Josephus, tells us that any reprisal would be suffered 
rather than let the Emperor Caligula set up a statue in the 
temple; that in the time of Herod not even a representation 
of an eagle was permitted at the gate of the temple; and 
that when Pilate marched his troops into Jerusalem it 
occasioned a riot. Solely in order to avoid polluting the 
sacred soil of Judea, Vitellius took his troops to Petra by 
a roundabout course. The palace of Antipas in Tiberius 
was destroyed because it contained images of animals at 
the first outbreak of war. No kind of business dealings 
whatever were carried on with a Gentile by an Israelite, lest 
he should thereby be polluted. Ifa stove had been heated 
by wood taken from a pagan grove, the stove must be 
broken and rendered unuseable. If bread had been baked 
in the stove, they were forbidden to eat the bread. Indeed, 
as Schurer says, ‘“The more vigorously and perseveringly 
heathenism continued to penetrate into Palestine, the more 
energetically did legal Judaism feel called upon to oppose 
it.’ Hence, between Judaism and heathenism there was 
an impassable gulf. 

Nor is there any trace here, contrary to the suggestion 
of certain writers, of Hellenic influence. However con- 


"0 The Jewish People in Time of Jesus Christ, Vol. I, Div. IL, pp. 52, 53. 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 31 


fused may have been the jumble of Greek mysteries, of 
Oriental phantasies, Mithras worship, Isis worship and 
the like floating in the general thought of that day among 
Gentile masses in Palestine, owing to the flux of ideas 
among all peoples, nevertheless here the innate Jewish 
prejudice continued inflexible against all things foreign, the 
cleansing and illuminating power of the Holy Spirit 
“working wonders’? among the people. All notions of 
pagan gods and legends of the supernatural births of 
heroes, which such scholars as Cheyne and Gunkle and 
Pfleiderer insist on introducing on every occasion, therefore 
must be absolutely excluded. The whole milieu is intensely 
Jewish. The preaching, the religious fervor, the joyful 
confidence in the Messianic character of Jesus, the outpour- 
ing of the Holy Spirit fulfilling the prophecy of Joel, all 
have an Old Testament tenor and background. Their 
roots are sunk deep in the religious soil, deep in the ideas 
and feelings and habits of the Chosen People. They see 
Jesus the Messiah in the framework of their national his- 
tory, they see him in the heart of their sacred writings, 
and everything foreign to that understanding of Him is 
rejected. Such is the situation following Pentecost. 

Now, naturally, two compelling questions lying at the 
root of our inquiry arise here: 

(1) Did these early Christians make any intimate in- 
quiries during those days concerning the birth and descent 
of Jesus? 

(2) And, if so, what was the attitude of Mary, the 
mother of Jesus, toward such inquiries? 

Such questions, then, as above propounded cannot be 
avoided. In keeping with the very nature of our minds 
they force themselves upon our attention and compel us, 
whether we can answer them satisfactorily or not, to con- 
sider and weigh them seriously. Those who oppose the 
doctrine of the virgin birth and, for proof of their posi- 


32 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 

tion, confine themselves to the silence of the New Testa- 
ment regarding it—as if silence proved anything—or to 
the lack of records, or to the recital of ancient legends, 
seem to forget that there are other elements of human 
nature which are involved in the subject as a whole. They, 
rely in support of rejection solely on their disbelief in 
the supernatural, or upon the seeming purport of the 
Book, sketchy and fragmentary as it is. And if 
human nature, that is, the full psychology entering into 
the situation, is brought into court, it is at once rejected 
as irrelevant, a product of mere imagination. Certainly 
fiction is one thing and history another, but the student 
of New Testament criticism is fully aware that imagina- 
tion is not the sole prerogative of one class of critics, nor 
can it ever be. Imagination, as Zahn, the illustrious 
scholar of Erlangen, had occasion to write, has a legitimate 
place in historical science. Its place there is “‘to set in a 
clear light the possibility and probability of the pre- 
suppositions which are surrounded by the actual facts.” 
But, on the other hand, “‘the imagination must guard itself 
carefully against postulates which have possible support 
only in the narrow experience whose vision is bounded by 
the four walls of a study.’’* 

Mary lived for some years in Jerusalem.*? In all proba- 
bility she died there,** and not until after her death did 
John leave Jerusalem and take up his residence in Ephesus. 
Mary lived in close association with those who had been 
in intimate fellowship with the Lord, among the friendly 
thousands who believed in Him as the Messiah of Israel. 
They all knew her as the mother of Jesus and they must 
have regarded her with peculiar reverence. 

Those were marvelous days. Not since the world began 
had there been such a manifestation of acts of immediacy, 


Ast SHAS 
31 Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. Il, p. 376, Eng. Trans, 
82 John xix. 27. Cf. Gal. ii. 1-9. 

83 Farrar, Early Days of Christianity, pp. 379, 388 and notes, 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 33 


on the part of God. It is difficult for us to recover faintly 
in thought and feeling the experiences of those who were 
on the ground and suddenly before their own eyes saw the 
mighty hand of God in “‘signs and wonders’’ wrought by 
the apostles, and felt as men never felt before, the surgings 
of that triumphant power agitating multiplied thousands, 
which turned out to be a religious revolution unparalleled 
in human history. 

Unless human nature has radically changed in the in- 
terval, it is in harmony with universal human experience 
to believe that among these multitudes of Christian be- 
lievers inquisitiveness must have been at fever heat and an 
intensely religious desire, as well as a loving and reverential 
curiosity urging them to learn everything that could be 
discovered concerning the person and life of Jesus. This, 
doubtless, will be admitted. To assert the contrary right 
in full view of the extraordinary events taking place is to 
assert something at odds with human nature and especially 
untrue to the social characteristics of Oriental peoples, as 
is brought out in the Book of Acts. 

Moreover, the information concerning the birth of the 
Messiah which Matthew afterwards incorporated in his 
Gospel, and which Luke gave to Theophilus, who with 
the natural instinct of a Greek would desire to know the 
history of Jesus “from the beginning,’’ was no chance find. 
It would be eagerly sought for with profound religious 
and theological interest by teachers of the people, that is, 
the priests and Levites, who were versed in Old Testament 
prophecy, as well as by the unlearned multitudes who 
formed the Christian community. It is quite probable that 
in those days, certainly not later, the Logia or Sayings 
of our Lord, the source material to which so much impor- 
tance is at present attached in New Testament criticism, 
were salvaged, for every scrap of information concerning 
Jesus that could be obtained from the apostles and from 


34 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


those who had heard the very words of Jesus from the 
beginning, was set aside for preservation. 

The opposite stand appears to be well-nigh impossible 
to assume. For what is the contrary view but the assump- 
tion that no inquiry whatever of weight and consequence 
was made concerning the birth and early life of Jesus; 
that no questions were ever asked of Mary, the mother, 
who was still in the city and was known to the apostles 
and to all the Church? Is this contrary supposition plaus- 
ible? Such want of inquisitiveness was never known 
before. Why should it be so now? All the Gospels testify 
that Jesus was the object of ceaseless and varied questions 
concerning himself, his authority and his mission, wher- 
ever He went. “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” “Is 
not this the son of Joseph and are not his sisters and his 
brethren with us?” ‘Is not this the Christ, and if the 
Christ should come will he do more than this man does?” 
“Whence art thou? And by what authority doest thou 
these things?’”” Jesus was always a mystery, and mystery 
is always a creator of inquiry. 

The study of Prophecy concerning the Messiah, which 
apostolic preaching so greatly emphasized, and the fulfill- 
ment of which in Christ was the constant theme and 
burden of all the apostles’ teaching, must have of itself 
stimulated and compelled inquiry concerning his parentage 
among large circles of devout Jews. Isaiah, Zechariah, 
Hosea, Micah, the Psalms—all contain predictions and 
descriptions of the Messiah. Hence in the minds of the 
multitude the question would inevitably arise, Were these 
predictions fulfilled in Jesus? Isaiah vii. 4 had declared 
his birth should be of a virgin; had this condition been 
met?** Was this Jesus born of a virgin? Micah had 
pointed out his birthplace. Was Jesus born in that town? 


* The Septuagint, then in popular use, reads: “behold the virgin (parthenos) shall 
conceive « « «© 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF a 


Mary, the mother of Jesus, knew. No one else could have 
known. Joseph was dead, as we infer from the fact that 
in his dying moments Jesus committed his mother to 
St. John. It is only natural to assume, therefore, that 
information which would be accepted as trustworthy 
would be sought from her. That it should be obtained 
was of vital importance to the Church at Jerusalem, since 
that body was composed of Jews who were steeped in the 
knowledge of the Scriptures, for if the facts did not agree 
with the prophecies of Isaiah and Micah and with other 
prophets of the Messianic day, this Jesus, whatever else 
He might be, could not be the Christ of Prophecy. 

The whole religious and social situation shuts us in to 
the belief that Mary, the mother, could not have refused 
to answer such inquiries as must have been made during 
all these years that she spent with the Church in Jerusalem. 
It is more than probable that she had already confided her 
sacred secret to the holy women who had been of the 
company of Jesus and were also her friends and relatives. 
Before her son Jesus was risen from the dead and glorified 
at the right hand of God to which He had ascended in 
the sight of them all, there was reason enough for prudent 
silence. For what value or significance would there have 
been to divulge if Jesus, by his resurrection and by this 
testimony of Pentecost from Almighty God, Jehovah 
Himself, in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, had not 
been demonstrated to be the Son of God? Who would 
have believed Mary had she revealed her secret before this 
extraordinary occurrence? Naturally diffident, modest 
and retiring as, in Luke’s Narrative of the Annunciation 
she is shown to have been, is it likely that this shrinking, 
sensitive woman, who refrained from disclosing her secret 
even to her betrothed husband but must go with it beyond 
the mountains to her kinswoman Elizabeth, would pro- 
claim it to the whole world? Such a disclosure would not 


36 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


have been of any service whatever to the ministry of Jesus, 
but only would have exposed her to universal shame. 

But now He is risen all is changed. She herself is filled 
with the Spirit. The stupendous events connected with 
Pentecost and the resurrection have demonstrated the true 
nature of the Son of Mary, the Son of God. He is now 
in the deepest sense no longer her son. He is the Son of 
God. 

He is now seen to have been from his very birth the 
organ of the Spirit of God. The Spirit glorifies Him 
before the people by “‘signs and wonders.” By the Spirit 
He was raised from the dead. By the Spirit He came into 
the world, and by the Spirit He was led through his life. 
The outpouring of the Spirit of God has thus created in 
the Church a situation, a state of mind, an atmosphere, 
favorable to belief in which at the providential time the 
secret of Mary, the truth concerning the birth of the Lord, 
could be revealed. 

The personal relation, the mental and spiritual attitude 
of Mary toward the marvelous revelations in those days 
of the character of Jesus is thus made clear to us. All 
events conspired to make it easy for her secret to be made 
known. Whatever the rest of Jerusalem heard told in the 
preaching of Peter and John, Mary also heard. Upon her 
also, as upon the apostles, had descended prophetic power, 
the cloven tongues of fire and the illuminating energy of 
the Holy Ghost. She was constantly of the apostolic 
company and shared in their reminiscences. With the 
astonished thousands who had listened to Peter, Mary 
heard her son proclaimed the Messiah of God, “‘the Prince 
of Life.” Wih her own eyes she saw the signs and won- 
ders of God. What reason, after that, for further reti- 
cence? Why, if there were any additional facts to be told, 
suppress them longer? 

That Mary had ever penetrated, prior to the resurrection 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 37 


and this outpouring of the revealing Spirit, the mystery of 
Jesus, is not, of course, to be conceded, in view of all 
the evidence there is against it. There was nothing in the 
words of the angel who announced his birth, marvelous 
as they were, to signify that the child to be born would 
be God Incarnate. Such an idea would not only have been 
foreign to the Jewish conception of God, but also incom- 
prehensible to a simple Jewish maiden who could not even 
grasp the idea of soon becoming a mother: “Since I know 
not man.”’ A sudden conviction like the lightning flash 
of Peter, ‘“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God!’’ was never the experience of Mary, so far as the 
records show. She walked in mystery. When Jesus de- 
clared that Peter’s penetration of his secret was not the 
result of reasoning or hearsay, ‘‘for flesh and blood hath 
not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in 
heaven,” that saying excluded his mother and members 
of her household from having any knowledge of his true 
nature. 

Always wondering, always keeping those things ‘‘in her 
heart,’ her son’s sayings, his doings, mystified Mary. 
Always trusting him, hesitant and only partially success- 
ful in her attempts to understand Him, it is no wonder 
that her facts concerning his birth should have been kept 
secret by her during his earthly life. Not understanding 
Him to her own satisfaction, notwithstanding her un- 
shared experience, how could she hope to make others 
understand? What would she do when asked for proofs 
or any evidence? On the other hand, there would have 
been no reason for keeping secret any of the facts if He 
had been born of earthly parents, even though his birth 
had been announced by an angel, for there had been other 
similar instances before in the history of Israel. This 
secrecy itself is evidence that something memorable had 
happened. 


38 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH?, 


But this is not the only instance where known facts 
were not revealed by members of the inner circle. Much 
was known to some of the disciples that is not found in 
their writings,*> many conversations and discourses of 
which we have no account. In John xvii. 1, 2 it is 
written, ‘‘“When Jesus had spoken these words He went 
forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron where was 
a garden . . . for Jesus oftimes resorted thither with 
his disciples.’” Now, we cannot suppose that in these hours 
of quietness and repose in this secluded spot Jesus had no 
conversation with his disciples concerning the Kingdom 
of God, and yet the Four Gospels contain no discourse of 
his delivered in the garden of Gethsemane. 

There were things which the disciples also did not 
understand until the resurrection threw its radiance into 
their dark places and lighted up their significance, as is 
suggested in the wonderful story of the walk to Emmaus.** 
Even within the circle of the disciples there were certain 
events, such as the Transfiguration, which were known to 
a few—to Peter and John and James—but were not 
known to the others; for Jesus expressly charged these 
disciples, saying, ““Tell the vision to no man till the Son 
of Man be risen from the dead.’’** 

There were sufficient reasons, it is clear, for this com- 
mand. For if it were told who could visualize the scene 
from the mere telling, or understand the significance of so 
astounding a revelation? Or, in default of its having 
occurred and been seen by certain men with their own 
eyes, who could believe that such an outburst of inward 
glory in the person of Jesus could occur; that living men 
could look upon the face of Moses, the Lawgiver of 
Israel; or see the face of Elijah, the prophet; and, above 
all, hear the voice of God himself sounding out of the 


8 John xxi. 25. 
8% Luke xxiv. 13-27. 
37 Matt. xviii. 9. 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 39 


clouds and exalting Jesus above Moses and the prophets 
as the spokesman of Jehovah? 

Probably some similar dread of incredulousness was the 
reason why the facts relative to the Lord’s birth were not 
made matters of common knowledge during his earthly 
life. Who would have believed them? It was the resur- 
rection, which demonstrated Him to be the Son of God, 
that broke down all barriers. By pouring its revealing 
light over all events, it made possible belief in that which 
before was unbelievable. And if the origin of Jesus, even 
after the resurrection, did not enter into the preaching of 
the apostles, this was probably because they were viewing 
his career from the Godward side solely, and it did not 
possess any immediate, vital relation to human redemp- 
tion, which was the supreme subject of the Gospel they 
were preaching. 

‘The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead thus not 
only gave men insight into vast areas of the revelation 
of God, and confirmed all that Jesus had claimed for him- 
self, but it enabled the secret facts concerning his birth to 
be told in a community of believers in his divine nature. 
All risk of the possibility of false reflection upon his origin 
or of unbelief as to the miraculous character of his birth 
was over, since this audience had themselves witnessed and 
experienced in this mighty display of divine power con- 
firmation of the facts now first made known. “By the 
resurrection,’ says the apostle, Jesus was ‘‘declared to be 
the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of 
holiness by the resurrection of the dead.’’** His real nature 
was not apprehensible by men until the resurrection 
demonstrated it. 

If Mary ever thus revealed the facts, it seems very prob- 
able (other considerations to the same effect will appear 
later) that she did so during this early period, that is, some 


88 Rom. i. 4, 


40 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


time between Pentecost and the rise of the Judaizing party 
in Jerusalem. It was in those God-filled days when the 
energy of the Holy Spirit was so mightily manifested 
among believers, demonstrating beyond all cavil the divine 
truth of the apostolic preaching, that the virgin birth of 
our Lord became known to the Church in Jerusalem. This 
is the period we fix upon, at any rate, as the date of the 
revelation, and it is to this period, as it will be shown, 
that all lines of evidence converge. 

As previously set forth, no other period either later or 
earlier adjusts itself to the facts of history. {Too much 
emphasis cannot be put upon this point. Its intelligent 
acceptance will dispose at once of many ingenious theories 
and numerous volumes of critical observations on this sub- 
ject which have become current in theological literature. 

In favor of this period there is abundant evidence, but 
not for any other period. In his Introduction to the New 
Testament, Zahn affirms that: ‘Passages like Luke i. 11, 
of which the poetical charm and true Israelitish spirit of 
the narrative portions and inserted psalms is comparable 
only to the finest parts of the Books of Samuel, could not 
have been originated by a Greek like Luke. They must 
have originated in Palestine, where men and women of 
prophetic temperament and prophetic gifts were closely 
associated with the beginnings and progress of Christi- 
anity.’°® Luke twice points out that Mary kept in 
memory .and pondered significant sayings associated with 
the childhood and youth of her son.*° In this way Luke 
indicates that traditions in Luke i. 11 were transmitted 
through her. Who first wrote them down and when 
they were written we do not know.*t Such is Zahn’s 
testimony as to time. Admittedly, we do not know who 
first wrote down the narratives, but we do know that they 


e— 
63, 41, 46, 55, 67, 713 ih 25, 36. Acts ii. 17; xi. 29 ff.; xv. 32; xxi. 9 f, 
a0'5i, 19, 51 £.3 vie 166. 
@Vol. III, pp. 112, 113, Eng. Trans. 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 41 


were in existence before Luke and Matthew embodied them 
in their Gospels. 

Harnack says that the story of the infancy of our Lord 
in Luke’s Gospel comes from circles quite different from 
those whence sprang the corresponding story in St. Mat- 
thew. Interest in Joseph is here almost wanting. ‘‘St. 
Mary is, on the other hand, thrust into the foreground} 
vide i. 26, 45, 56; it. 5, 16, 19, 33-35, 48, 51; indeed, 
from ii. 19, 51 it follows that the stories are intended to 
be regarded in the last instance as from St. Mary herself. 
Here, although we are, of course, destitute of all means 
of historical control, there can be no doubt that these 
stories have been fully edited by a poetic artist, namely, 
St. Luke. But there can be just as little doubt that St. 
Luke regarded them as proceeding from St. Mary; for his 
practice elsewhere as an historian proves that it would not 
be like him to turn round and invent such a story. Hence 
we may conclude that they came to him with a claim to 
the authority of St. Mary, and therefore certainly from 
Palestine.”’*? Such then, in passing, is Harnack’s testimony 
as to time. 

In John xix. 27, 28 it is stated that Jesus in the agony 
of approaching death committed his mother to the care of 
the beloved disciple John. And from that hour that 
disciple took her to his own home. The continued resi- 
dence of the apostle in Jerusalem for a number of years 
as is shown in the Acts is evidence that John did not take 
the mother of Jesus back to his Galilean home. He had 
a house in Jerusalem. But in or about 41 A.D., choosing 
that one among numerous dates suggested, Paul was pres- 
ent at the Council in Jerusalem and Luke was with him.** 
John was also present at that Council. Is it not probable 
then that at this time, if no earlier,** Luke received from 


“4 Date of Acts, etc., p. 154, 
43 Acts xxi. , 
“ Ibid., xii, 


42 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


the mother of the Lord herself the narrative he recorded 
later in his Gospel? It makes little difference on this point 
if the date of the Council is placed some years later. At 
whichever of these dates we accept, John, then living in 
Jerusalem, was present, and Mary was living at that time 
in his home, for the earliest tradition tells us that she 
accompanied him to Ephesus, a living witness to the belief 
held in the Church concerning the birth of her son. 

Thorough criticism of the theories of Lobstein, Keim, 
Schmidt, Conybeare, Usener and others who are compelled 
to insist upon a later date for the Gospels, leads also to 
the final conclusion that whatever direction our investiga- 
tions take we are finally driven back to the Church in 
Jerusalem for the time and the place that the belief in the 
virgin birth originated. 

Nor is there anything strange in this. Here in Jerusalem 
Jesus was proclaimed the Son of God. Here also, and 
during this period, the Judaizing party took its rise, who 
were the first to deny the virgin birth. At a later period 
they were known as the Ebionites. In the ranks of these 
Judaists, says Farrar, there arose that imminent danger of 
apostasy against which they had received such solemn 
warnings in the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Epistle of 
St. James himself; it was from their ranks also that there 
arose the two sects of Ebionites and Nazarenes.’’*® Har- 
nack states that the distinctions of belief among the Jewish 
Christians (Ebionites, Nazarenes) were “‘already formu- 
lated in the Apostolic Age.”’** Among the points of con- 


45 Early Days of Christianity, Chap. XXX, p. 496. 

# History of Dogma, Eng. Trans., p. 76. Baur, Dogmengeschicte, p. 64, says 
that opposition to Paul by this party assumed the characters of Ebionism which was 
not only antagonistic to Pauline teachings—'‘Sondern in der Opposition gegen die 
apostolische Auctoritat des Apostles Paulus bestand.’” See Hagenbach, History of 
Doctrine, Vol. I, pp. 67, 68 and Index; Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, Vol. I, 
pp. 156, 157; Weizicker, The Apostolic Age, Vol. II, see Ebionite, Index. J. Estlin 
Carpenter says these Ebionites ‘‘were the heirs of the situation indicated in the Book 
of Acts.” ‘‘Both these types of Jewish Christians clung to humanitarian views of the 
Person of Christ; they rejected His miraculous Conception and His Deity’ (Phases of 
Early Christianity). 


PRIMITIVE BELIER 43 


troversy at issue were: ‘‘Whether Paul was 4 chosen 
servant of Christ, or a God-hated interloper; whether 
Jesus was the Son of Joseph, or was miraculously begotten 
of the Holy Spirit.” 

Here it is natural to inquire, How could this party in 
the primitive Church have denied the virgin birth if that 
birth had not already been a sub ject of knowledge? That 
which is not known cannot be rejected. The conclusion 
that seems to force itself upon us, therefore, is that, in 
the Church at Jerusalem the miraculous birth of Jesus was 
accepted, and that this belief arose while Mary, the mother 
of Jesus, was still alive. This is the way in brief that 
we find and fix upon the period at which the belief arose, 
and the place in which it originated. That the story of 
the birth was known in the Church before Luke composed 
his Gospel is testified to by Luke himself in the preface to 
his Gospel. He begins his history with the statement that: 
“Since many have undertaken to draw up in regular order 
a narrative of those facts which have been fully established 
among us, just as those who were eye-witnesses from the 
beginning delivered them to us, it has seemed proper for 
me also, having traced accurately everything from the be- 
ginning, to write to thee, Most Excellent Theophilus, in 
an orderly manner in order that thou mayest know the 
certainty of the things thou hast been taught.” 

It is clear from this statement that the primitive 
Church did not remain content with the oral instruction 
of the apostles and that there arose a demand for a detailed 
account in writing of the life and teachings of the Lord. 
Who the “many” were that had attempted to do this, 
where they lived, what opportunities they had to learn 
the facts and what their detailed accounts contained, we 
do not know. We only know, or infer, that all they 
wrote which was a departure from the New Testament 
Was not satisfactory to the Church at large. Possibly 


44 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


those narratives were too fragmentary, or were lacking in 
accuracy. These defects Luke undertakes to remedy by 
giving an authoritative, exact and orderly account of 
everything from the beginning. “The evangelist Mark had 
failed in this respect in that his Gospel narrative begins 
with Jesus’ entrance upon his ministry and dates the begin- 
ning of the preaching of the Gospel from that event, but 
tells nothing of Jesus’ birth and childhood and other 
related events. 

But it is evident that, whoever these first historians 
were, they belonged to the Church in Jerusalem or were 
in close touch with its members or with the apostolic 
leaders there, for it was from such only that they could 
obtain any information, if they needed any assistance be- 
yond their own personal knowledge and experience. It 
is also clear that these ‘‘many” writers lived within the 
period we have designated, since what they wrote must 
have been tested by a sufficient length of time to have 
proved its unsatisfactory character. 

It will be noticed that every statement in Luke’s preface 
leads us back to a time long prior to the writing of his 
Gospel. He is to write of certain facts, the authenticity of 
which had already been fully established in the belief of 
the Church, that is, the Jerusalem Church, for no other 
could have borne witness to facts. 

These facts were given by those who had been eye- 
witnesses and preachers of these things. ‘They were un- 
doubtedly the apostles who for some years taught the 
Church in Jerusalem. Among these witnesses, as we have 
seen, was Mary, his mother, who was as able to vouch 
for the life, the death and resurrection of her son as were 
any of the apostles, and although she appears nowhere in 
the New Testament after the account of Pentecost, except 
for a simple reference in the Epistle to the Galatians, it 
would be an extreme inference to conclude that she bore no 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 45 


4 


testimony to the birth and childhood of her son. Both 
Matthew and Luke must have obtained information from 
somebody. But from whom? 

The personal pronoun “us” in Luke’s preface should 
not be overlooked. It has reference to those designated in 
verse one, that is, members of the Church whose history 
reached back to Pentecost. These facts which had been 
delivered in catechetical instruction were the same which 
Luke declared he had accurately investigated from their 
beginning in order that there should be no doubt as to 
the “‘certainty’’ of the things he was to relate. For he did 
not first begin his Gospel and seek verification of its state- 
ments afterward, or as he went along. He began his 
inquiries, as the perfect participle “having traced’’ shows, 
and gathered together his information from various sources 
before he entered upon the formal task of arranging his 
material and writing his Gospel. With this in view, he 
begins with the birth of John the Baptist and from that 
starting point proceeds to the birth of Jesus. 

Now, it is not likely that, having investigated all things 
from the beginning, the evangelist would have included 
the account of the virgin birth of our Lord in his Gospel 
among those things firmly established as a matter of belief 
in the Christian community, if that had not been the case. 
Especially would this be true since there were those who 
could contradict him then living at the time Luke wrote 
his Gospel, members of the Church in Jerusalem, or at 
Antioch, where the Church had been composed originally 
of believers who had been expelled from Jerusalem. Luke 
was probably a member of the Church in Antioch. Euse- 
bius*? says Luke hailed from there. Barnabas went to 
Antioch from Jerusalem and resided there. Through him 
as well as from others who had moved from Jerusalem 


“7 History, Chap. IV. 


46 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


to Antioch Luke could have learned all that was known 
to the Jerusalem Church. 


Now they which were scattered abroad upon the 
persecution that arose about Stephen traveled as far 
as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the 
word to none but unto the Jews only. And some 
of them were men of Cyprus, which, when they were 
come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching 
the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with 
them; and a great number believed, and turned unto 
the Lord. Then tidings of these things came unto 
the ears of the Church which was in Jerusalem: and 
they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far 
as Antioch. Who, when he came, and had seen the 
grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that 
with purpose of heart they should cleave unto the 
Lord. For he was a good man, and full of the Holy 
Ghost and of faith: and much people was added unto 
the Lord. ‘Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus, for 
to seek Saul: And when he had found him, he 
brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, 
that a whole year they assembled themselves with the 
Church, and taught much people. And the disciples 
were called Christians first at Antioch. And in those 
days came prophets from Jerusalem and Antioch.** 


It will be noted, and due emphasis will be laid upon the 
fact, that Paul also resided in Antioch a whole year, and 
that prophets came there from Jerusalem preaching and 
strengthening the Church. It is difficult to imagine that 
a whole year could have passed without anything having 
been said or taught of the birth and childhood of Jesus. 
Was it here and at this time that Paul learned the full 
details of the life of Jesus? 

“@ Acts ii. 19-27. 


PRIMITIVE BELIEF 47 


In this connection it is worthy of note that Ignatius, 
who suffered martyrdom under Trajan 107 A. D., was the 
Bishop of this Antiochian Church at that time, that is, 
about thirty-seven years after the fall of Jerusalem. He 
certainly knew the belief, whatever it may have been, of 
that Church from its beginning. Since he must have 
known those whose parents or relatives were members of 
the Church in those early apostolic days, he would have 
found out during the period of his ministry and episcopate 
that this faith had been held all those years up to the time 
of his death. Now, we know from his Epistle to the 
Ephesians, accepting it in its shorter form as among those 
Epistles generally accounted as genuine, that he believed 
and preached the doctrine of the virgin birth.* 

The simple fact that confronts us is that Barnabas and 
all the other disciples and prophets and teachers who went 
from Jerusalem to Antioch must have perfectly known 
the belief held in the Jerusalem Church concerning the 
birth of our Lord. If we say that Luke must have learned 
from these disciples in the course of a whole year’s ac- 
quaintance the true history of our Lord’s nativity, it is 
easy to understand why he should begin at the beginning 
and incorporate what he had learned in his Gospel. On 
the contrary supposition that those disciples knew nothing 
of the matter and that their belief was that Jesus had been 
born in a natural manner, it is exceeding strange, to say 
the least, that Luke should have written such an account 
of that birth, of which nobody knew anything, as we find 
in his Gospel. After his statement that he had critically 
investigated everything from the beginning this would be 
even more strange. 

There is nothing strained in this line of reasoning. The 
record in Acts xi. compels us to face this problem, which 
resolves itself into no problem at all if we accept the most 


® Eph. xviii, 


48 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH?, 


natural conclusion, namely, that within the period in- 
volved the virgin birth was known to the Church in 
Jerusalem. It does, however, become an insoluble problem 
if we assume that this great body of Christians which 
included teachers and prophets from the parent Church 
in Jerusalem, where apostles and disciples were still living 
who had known the Lord, had carried on their church 
life for a whole year and never discussed nor even heard 
of the circumstances of the Lord’s birth. 

Contrary to what seems to be the natural conclusion, 
it may still be held that Luke learned nothing in the 
course of a whole year from those representatives, and 
regardless even whether or not he intended at that time to 
write a history of the Christian beginnings, he must have 
obtained his information at some other time from some 
other source. Whatever the knowledge gained by him 
from other sources, it is again a strain upon our credulity 
to believe that these disciples from Jerusalem would be 
ignorant of the same facts. Since it was within the circle 
of the Church in Jerusalem only that the facts were 
known, it must have been somehow from members of that 
company that Luke obtained the facts he recorded. 


a 


CHAPTER II 
OBJECTIONS 
MYTHICAL THEORY 


If the chain of fact and inference presented in the pre- 
ceding chapter be accepted, St. Paul can be immediately 
connected with the Jerusalem Church and his knowledge 
of its religious belief taken for granted. On this basis it 
would not be difficult to prove that the silence of St. Paul 
concerning the virgin birth is no evidence of his ignorance 
of it. But since much that has been favored in the fore- 
going pages has been denied or ignored, and so many 
objections to the historical fact of the virgiu birth have 
been raised and these by scholars who are by no means - 
irresponsible in their methods of inquiry, it seems necessary 
that these objections, or at least the principal ones, should 
be considered before proceeding on the basis of Paul’s 
actual knowledge. For, if these objections are valid, cer- 
tainly no one would care to take the stand that Paul had 
knowledge of facts which were not matters of public 
knowledge in his day. 

Criticism advanced against the historicity of the narrd- 
tives in Matthew and Luke based on denial of the miracu- 
lous will not here be considered. A discussion of the 
miraculous does not fall within the scope of our inquiry. 
Whether the birth stories in Matthew and Luke are miracu- 
lous, historical or legendary in character, is of no concern 
in this investigation. The simple question here is, Did 
Paul know of them? 

We may say, however, in passing, that to affirm the 
freedom of the human spirit jn a world governed by neces- 
sity, that is, by unchangeable law, in the one breath, and 

49 


50 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH?, 


with the next to deny freedom of action to the Infinite 
Spirit, the Omnipotent God, is poor philosophy. Mate- 
rialistic science may go contrary to human experience and 
insist that mind itself is under the same law of neecssity 
as matter. But even a Haeckel knows that he need not 
preach his Monism unless he wishes to do so. The human 
mind is free. It is free not only to act as the hands on a 
watch-dial are compelled to act, but free also to take the 
opposite course, if it so chooses. But observe that this 
freedom is itself a miracle in the sense of a tremendous 
exception, as yet unaccounted for, to the law of uniformity 
in a universe which is governed solely, as materialists 
affirm, by unchangeable law. If, then, the human will is 
free, is the Omnipotent Will fixed and unmovable? Is it 
conceivable that the Omnipotent is so extremely limited 
by the laws of his own making that He can neither sus- 
pend, change nor in any way alter or modify the existing 
modes of action in a universe of which every atom and 
every vibration of every atom depend for existence upon 
the constant energy of that Will? 

An omnipotent God limited beyond recall in any sense 
is a contradiction in thought. For if limited against his 
will He cannot be omnipotent, and if not omnipotent He 
cannot be God, since that which is limited against its will 
is less than that which imposes the limitation and there- 
fore is less than God supreme or an infinite God, uncon- 
ditioned and absolute. All philosophical theories about 
the relativity of God amount to a condition imposed on 
God, and are equally self-contradictory, if taken seriously, 
that is, if the terms used are understood in any precise 
sense. In Holy Scripture, God himself resents the impo- 
sition of limitation of any kind. ‘“Yea, they turned back 
and tempted God and limited [Tavah—marked off] the 
Holy One of Irsael.”"? They challenged the power of God. 


Ps, Ixxviii. 41. 


OBJECTIONS 51 


Limitation is one thing, self-restraint is another. Self- 
restraint is an act of freedom from within. Limitation is 
restraint imposed from without. 

In the last analysis, what is the source of energy or 
force in the universe if it is not omnipotent will in action? 
All energy, whether human or divine, is will-power. 
Where there is no will there is no energy or force, and 
therefore no movement. That infinite will is free. It 
bears a relation to the universe conceivably similar, though 
infinitely more intimate, to that which the finite human 
will bears to the human body. To deny, therefore, the 
possibility of miracles is to deny the freedom of God. The 
affirmation that miracles have happened, logically speak- 
ing, is another question. Because God can work miracles 
it does not follow that He has therefore done so. The 
settlement of that issue is solely a question of evidence. 
This is denied. But to affirm that evidence sufficient to 
establish the fact of miracles is impossible to procure, since 
it is more probable that the testimony should be mistaken 
than that the laws of nature should be broken, or that evi- 
dence which contradicts human experience cannot be ad- 
missible is to beg the whole question in debate. How do 
we know that the laws of nature are broken in the case of 
miracles? To affirm that they are is to assume that we 
know all that there is to know about nature. If miracles 
happen, why should they not be the results of forces act- 
ing upon nature’s materials? To assume that matter is 
absolutely irresponsive to any other than the manipula- 
tions familiar to us is to assume more than science, if 
indeed it has any right to enter this domain at all, will 
pteterid to assume. 

Natural laws are not entities, things in themselves, self- 
existent. They are methods, modes, by which things are 
done. Whether a hitherto unknown mode of action has 
occurred is a question of evidence. ‘To hold that such 


52 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


evidence must be contrary to human experience is illogical, 
a putting of the cart before the horse, since unless human 
experiences is a closed book it must be subject to addition, 
and every fresh addition the first time it occurs is contrary 
to previous experience, which it is affirmed it cannot be. 
To judge human experience on one level by human expe- 
rience on any other level is irrational. An item of expe- 
rience taken from any period in human history may be 
contrary to the experience of men of the present, but that 
does not render it unhistorical or impossible. ‘That the 
virgin birth, if it occurred, involved the least possible 
violation of familiarly known natural law, may well be 
the verdict in the light of Darwin’s chapter on ‘‘Partheno- 
genesis in Changes in Plants and Animals Under Demon- 
stration,” although there is no evidence extant of partheno- 
genesis among mammalia. 

The chief objections against trusting the narrative of 
the virgin birth which we shall consider are: 

(1) That it is purely mythical in character; that is, 
it did not originate in Palestinian Christian circles, but on 
Gentile soil. 

(2) That it is a theological development based upon a 
misinterpretation of Isaiah vii. 14. 

(3) That the accounts given of it in Matthew and 
Luke are interpolations. 

These three are the principal exceptions current. Let 
us consider them in order. 

(1) Wernle is of the opinion that “‘the myth sprang 
up amongst Gentile Christians. A great portion of the 
old Jewish Christians rejected it and rightly so for it did 
away with the descent from David which was a matter of 
such importance to them.’ 

Wernle is typical. It is not necessary, therefore, to cite 
the numerous other writers of his school who agree with 


2 Beginnings of Christianity, Vol. Il, p. 117. 


OBJECTIONS 53 


him. The bobbing up of this ever-recurring myth- 
hypothesis will be nothing new to readers of historical 
literature. Long ago David Frederic Strauss, in his once 
celebrated Leben Jesu, worked out the whole theory with 
reference to the Gospels with patience and skill, but better 
scholarship and saner views have since laid the mythical 
theory low. It may not be wholly a digression, however, 
if a word is said here concerning mythology, since some 
tecent biblical scholars make much use of it in their Old 
Testament studies, and also in their attempts to explain 
the beginnings of Christian thought and belief. 

Ruskin,® the celebrated art critic, once gave some charm- 
ing lectures on Grecian myths, and showed in his exquisite 
manner what wonderful and beautiful meanings were con- 
tained, like butterflies in cocoons, in these ancient stories 
of the gods. Ruskin was a past-master in the use of 
English. Such is the beauty of his style, the surprising 
wealth of his fancy, the richness of his diction and the 
fervor of his poetic feeling, that one is in real danger of 
being lured under the spell of his genius into the belief that 
these hoary myths did really contain all that Ruskin reads 
into them. But Ruskin was not the first to credit these 
myths with possessing what his inventive faculty dictated. 
The early Stoics and later the Neo-Platonists, ashamed of 
the depraved character of their rabble of gods and god- 
desses, endeavored with varying skill and success to explain 
away the licentious deeds of these libidinous deities by 
turning these stories into religious and philosophical alle- 


* Certainly I do not forget Max Muller’s Lectures on Mythology, nor should the 
Modern interpreter of ancient myths neglect to read his letter to Sir George Cox: 


grandmother in any small village of Greece long before the encyclopedic treatment of 
Greek fable began” (Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 284). Muller's Lectures were 
delivered Nov. 9, 1863; Ruskin’s, March 9, 1869, For a characteristic letter from 
Carlyle on these, see Life and Letters of Ruskin by Collingwood. 


54 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


gories. The same method, not so very new therefore after 
all, is now applied by certain biblical critics to the mythol- 
ogy of the Babylonians, and a Cheyne, a Gunkel, a 
Delitzsch or a Schmiedel will not hesitate to make out that 
these myths contain the germs of Christian faith. 

In order to justify such methods of interpretation and 
such artificial making over of religious history, a new 
definition of myth has been invented, or rather the old has 
been revised, for a myth is now looked upon as originally 
a pictorial representation of an idea, the form or outward 
expression of a religious concept.* 

Nor would we contend that such definition should be 
ruthlessly set aside as unworthy of serious consideration. 
Despite prejudice to the contrary, it is possible after all 
that in his infinite wisdom and in accord with his 
evolutionary method of human education in things re- 
ligious shown in the gradual unfolding of his revelation 
in the Scriptures, God did employ the myth in the early 
dawn of history as a vehicle for imparting divine truth. 
We can imagine also that the Messianic idea might have 
been implanted germlike in the ancient stories of the con- 
flicts between the evil gods opposed to man’s well-being 
and the good gods who would deliver him from the 
malevolent powers bent upon his destruction, as is illus- 
trated by the Babylonian myth in which Marduk, the 
Deliverer or Savior, finally overcomes Tiamat, the god of 
chaos and all evil. In the Old Testament, according to 
some biblical scholars, echoes of these ancient myths occur, 
and such writers as Professors Gunkel and Pfleiderer under- 
take to point out the part these myths played in certain 
statements in the New Testament, especially in the 
Apocalypse. 

But if this was the real, the original purpose of myth, 
so understood by both the people and the myth-makers, 


“Osterly, The Evolution of the Messianic Idea, p. 12. 


OBJECTIONS 55 


what marvelous knowledge of nature, what astonishing 
intuitions concerning religious truth not to be openly re- 
vealed until future ages, these myth-makers must have had! 
The virgin birth of Jesus, his conflict with evil powers, his 
death, resurrection and ascension, are all of them apparent 
now that we are able to decode them from the stories of 
Marduk and Tiamat, or of Isis, Istar, Attis and Adonis! 
Pfleiderer is of the opinion that ‘‘the story of the dragon 
pursuing the child in Rev. xii. 3-5 is a recast of the Greek 
myth [transmitted by Hyginus] of the great dragon Pytho 
pursuing the pregnant Leto to destroy her, because of a 
prophecy that the son of Leto would slay him.’ ‘‘Evi- 
dently [Cheyne quotes him thus in his Bible Problems] 
this myth stands in some historical connection with the 
description in Rev. xii.” The idea which these writers 
seek to convey is that intimations of the historic facts in 
the life of our Lord are somehow the development of ideas 
contained in these ancient myths, or that events related of 
the life of our Lord are but conscious adaptations of these 
stories. 

The wonder is that the eminent scholars who argue 
thus from crude resemblances or false analogies did not, 
before becoming so thoroughly committed to them, consult 
to more advantage the arguments in the writings of the 
Early Church, which supply ample evidence of the falsity 
of these notions. Their refutation of these wild conjec- 
tures is complete. The resemblances which Cheyne, 
Pfleiderer and others point out were daily commonplaces. 
but they were no embarrassments to the early Christian 
apologists. Is it possible that Mithraism was the source 
of the Christian sacraments? And yet where will you find 
closer analogies than those between Mithraic rites and 
Christian rites? How could these analogies have escaped 
the attention of the Christian Fathers? Referring to this 
very Mithraic worship, Tertullian writes: ‘The devil 


LY 


56 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


baptizes certain folk, and his believers and faithful ones, 
promising remission of sins after baptism. And if I still 
recollect aright, Mithra there sets a mark on the forehead 
of his soldiers, celebrates the oblation of bread, introduces 
a symbol of the resurrection and wins a crown under the 
sword. And what are we to say of Satan restricting his 
high-priest to one marriage? (The devil too has his virgins 
and chaste celibates.’’® 

If, therefore, our modern interpreters of myths, who 
follow the method of Greek philosophers in holding that 
profound ideas find picture presentation in myths,. really 
mean what they say, the prophets of Israel must have been 
mere babes in comparison with these ancient myth-makers 
in the knowledge of God’s thought concerning human 
redemption. For if these myths really teach what these 
interpreters assert is contained in them, inspiration must 
have participated in their origin to an extent that it im- 
parted to them a prophetic character. The redemption of 
man from the powers of darkness by One who shall enter 
into conflict with these powers, the death, resurrection, 
and return of that One to the high heavens, are in no 
degree whatever so clearly delineated or even hinted at in 
any book or prophecy of the Old Testament concerning 
the Messiah as they are set forth on this theory in these 
ancient myths of Marduk and Osiris in Babylonian and 
Egyptian mythology. 

The drama of redemption sponsored by the myth- 
makers far surpasses in detail that of the prophets of 
Israel. In view of their relative worth in this respect one 
might suggest (if he were inclined to be facetious) that, 
since these beautiful myths which date from man’s early 
intellectual awakening constitute clear pictorial representa- 
tions coinciding at so many points with what Christ Jesus, 
the Messianic Deliverer, should do and experience in 


5 On Prescription Against Heretics, Chap. XL., Eng. Trans, 


i 


OBJECTIONS 57, 


future ages, a place should be found for these wonderful 
Babylonian myths and legends alongside the prophecies of 
Isaiah, for example, as a fit addition to the revelation of 
God to the people of Israel! So inferior is Old Testament 
revelation made to appear on this reading to these ‘‘old 
Wives’ stories’! 

The simple truth is that the version of the religious 
history of humanity invented by certain scholars in order 
to furnish better ground and support for their theories is 
not at allin harmony with the actual course of the develop- 
ment of idolatry as it can be traced in the literature and 
archeology of the pre-Christian period. The farther back 
we go up the stream of history, the simpler become religion 
and religious thought. St. Paul is a better philosopher 
than are these modern mythologists. To him the course 
of the religious history of humanity is not an ascending 
but a descending one. Primitive man in Paul’s thought 
was not devoid of capacity for reason. He was not a 
blind, stupid, mindless savage, shut off from all real knowl- 
edge of God. These ancient myths on their own testimony 
are the products of ages of growth. From the beginning 
man possessed a knowledge of God; some cared for and 
retained it, but others neglected it and lost it in the easily 
understandable way that man or race may lose it today. 


Because that when they knew God they glorified 
him not as God neither were thankful; but became 
vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was 
darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they 
became fools, and changed the glory of the incor- 
ruptible God into an image made like corruptible 
man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creep- 
ing things; who changed the truth of God into a lie, 
and worshiped and served the creature more than the 
Creator who is blessed forever, Amen. And even as 


58 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


they did not like to retain God in their knowledge 
God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those 
things which are not convenient. 


Did the prophets of Israel detect anything divine in 
these myths? That they were well acquainted with these 
pagan stories modern mythologists must admit, for they 
insist that numerous myths are scattered through the 
Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. Now, the fact is 
the Hebrew prophets detected no such divine meanings in 
these stories. On the contrary, the attitude of Israel’s 
teachers toward them is one of derision and contempt, for 
they well know it is not possible to let everyday mortals 
cling to the stories of the gods and expect them at the same 
time to drop the worship of them altogether. 

Did the original authors of these myths intend to use 
them as a vehicle for divine ideas? 


The word myth (mythos, fabula, story) in its 
original meaning [says Grote] signified a statement 
or current narrative, without any connotative impli- 
cation either of truth or falsehood. . . . Its value 
or interest depended upon the poetic genius of the 
composer. Later on in the intellectual development 
of Greece the myths were looked at from a point of 
view completely foreign to the reverential curiosity 
and liberal imaginative faith of the Homeric man: 
they were broken up and recast in order to force 
them into new molds such as their authors had never 
conceived. Pindar repudiates some stories and trans- 
forms others, because they are inconsistent With his 
conception of God.’ 


Other poets, such as Aeschylus and Sophocles, did like- 
wise. Plato saw nothing in myths but good or bad poetic 


©Rom. i. 21. 
" History of Greece, Vol. I. 


OBJECTIONS 59 


fancies, nor would he tolerate their indiscriminate circu- 
lation in his Republic. ‘‘First of all, then,’’ he says, “‘it 
seems, we must exercise control over the fable [myth] 
makers; and whatever beautiful fable they may invent, 
we should select, and what is not we should reject. 
Those which both Hesiod and Homer told us, and other 
poets also; for they composed and related false fables for 
mankind and do still relate them. . . . These fables, said 
he, are indeed injurious, Neither are they to be told in 
our State,’’s 


Nor did Cicero see anything divine in myths such as 
ctiticism carried to extremes by the Neo-Platonists now 
sees in them. In his Nature of the Gods he says: 


Thus far have I been rather exposing the dreams 
of dotards than giving the opinion of philosophers. 
Not much more absurd than these are the fables of 
the poets, who owe all their power of doing harm 
to the sweetness of their language; who have repre- 
sented the gods as enraged with anger and inflamed 
with lust; who have brought before our eyes their 
wars, battles, combats, wounds; their hatreds, dis- 
sensions, discords, births, deaths, complaints and 
lamentations; their adulteries, their chains, their 
amours with mortals; and mortals begotten by im- 
mortals. To these idle and ridiculous flights of poets 
we may add the prodigious stories invented by the 
Magi and by the Egyptians also, which were of the 
same nature.® 


Some of these poetic writers, it is true, endeavored to 
turn certain of these ancient myths into allegories. But 
Cotta, one of Cicero’s character, ridicules their efforts to 
invest these fictions with secondary, hidden meanings, 


8 Bk. Il. 
° Bk. I, c xvi 


60 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


pointing out how ‘“‘any quality also in which there were 
any virtue was nominated a Deity.’’?° 

The New Testament has no part or lot in this work of 
trying to find something divine in these myths. Such a 
conception of them was wholly foreign to the thought of 
its writers. Paul in his First Epistle to Timothy exhorts 
him to warn the members of the Church at Ephesus, where 
the temple of Diana was located, not to ‘‘give heed to 
fables and endless genealogies.” And in admonishing 
Timothy himself to refuse to listen to old-womanish or 
silly fables," he adds, ‘‘for the time will come when they, 
will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts 
they shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 
and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and 
shall be turned unto fables [myths].22 The writer of 
II Peter declares, ‘““We have not followed cunningly de- 
vised fables [myths] when we made known unto you the 
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were 
eye-witnesses [saw with our own eyes] of his glory.’’!4 
Since Paul, it is certain, was in almost uninterrupted con- 
tact with all the forms of pagan worship current in the 
Roman Empire—the Mithras religion from Persia which 
had its seat at Tarsus, his birthplace, and the various cults 
of Adonis, Attis and Osiris in Hither Asia1*—he was 
therefore competent to estimate these ‘‘fables’’ and “‘endless 
genealogies’’ at their true value. He it was who earnestly 
exhorted the Church at Thessalonica “‘to prove all things,”’ 
i. e., to subject everything to the test of rigid analysis and 
then only to “keep that which is good.” 

Anyone who doubts whether Paul had an intimate 
knowledge of the myths and “‘mysteries’’ in circulation 

10 Nat. of the Gods, Bk, II, 

iv. 7. 

211 Tim. iv. 3, 4, 

Bi 14, 


“See H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religious; also Sir William 
Ramsay, The Teachings of St. Paul, etc. 


OBJECTIONS 61 


and practiced in his day, should read Col. ii. 18 and then 
turn to the remarkable chapter on the ‘‘Relation of Paul 
to Greek Mysteries’ in Ramsay's priceless work, The 
Teaching of Paul in Terms of the Present Day. His 
treatment more than any other in present-day literature 
shows that these pagan myths were unable to withstand 
the keen scrutiny of the apostle and were denied by him 
any place whatever in Christian thought and teaching. 

Every student who is at all acquainted with the writings 
of the Fathers, the Apologies of those Christian writers 
who themselves came out of heathenism, will recall the 
terrific scorn with which they ridicule the introduction of 
the myths of the gods into the farces and scurrilous plays 
of the age. So shameful was the vileness of the gods and 
goddesses, surpassing, indeed, that of the grossest libertines 
of earth, that some philosophers endeavored to soften their 
discreditableness by the use of allegory, but their Christian 
neighbors knew how idle all this whitewashing was and 
that these new portraits of the gods depended for their 
existence solely on the imagination of their creators. ‘They 
not only refused to admit the existence of deep and pro- 
found mystery unknown to the multitude, thus assumed 
to be present in these fables, but they laughed the philo- 
sophic attempts to get the public to believe it to scorn. 
“The very compositions of your poets,’’ writes Justin 
Martyr, who was himself a philosopher, “‘are monuments 
to madness and intemperance. . . . But since Homer, 
Hesiod wrote his Works and Days, who will believe his 
driveling theology?’’?® 

After Athenagoras has pointed out wickednesses and 
absurdities in these myths he makes his opponent say, in 
anticipation, as it were, of the line of argument of some 
modern writers: 


All these stories which seem to you disgraceful and 
15 Dis. to Greeks, I, 11. 


62 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


tending to the discredit of the gods, contain in them 
holy mysteries, theories wonderful and profound, and 
not such as any one can easily become acquainted 
with by force of understanding. For that is not 
meant and said, which has been written and placed 
on the surface of the story; but all these things are 
understood in allegorical senses, and by means of 
secret explanations privately supplied. 


(To this plea of the defense Athenagoras replies: 


These are all quirks, as is evident, and quibbles 
with which they are wont to bolster up weak cases 
before a jury, nay rather, to speak more truly, they 
are pretenses, such as are used in sophistical reason- 
ings, by which not the truth is sought after, but 
always the image, and appearance and shadow of the 
truth. For because it is shameful and unbecoming 
to receive as truth the correct accounts you have 
recourse to this expedient, that one thing should be 
substituted for another and that what was in itself 
shameful should, in being explained, be forced into 
the semblance of decency. 


By his exposé of the practice of whitewashing these 
myths, this Christian apologist shows himself to be in 
accord with Cicero, who in commenting on the deeds of 
the gods says: “‘All these opinions arise from old stories 
spread in Greece; the belief in which, Balbus, you well 
know ought to be stopped, lest religion should suffer. But 
you Stoics, so far from refuting them, even give them 
authority by the mysterious sense which you pretend to 
find in them.’’*® 

To affirm then, as Wernle does, without producing the 
slightest evidence that the story of the birth of Christ 


18 Nat. of the Gods, XXIII. 


OBJECTIONS 63 


from a virgin originated as a myth among Gentile Chris- 
tians may serve as a convenient loophole of escape from 
pressing difficulties, but it is not scholarship. Theories, 
no matter how strong the insistence, do not make good 
substitutes for evidence. In what part of the Roman 
Empire, we have a right to ask, did these Gentile Chris- 
tians in question live? and when did they invent or com- 
pile and devise this beautiful myth from the debris of 
pagan legends? 

If the claim bé made that they lived in the apostolic 
period, it will leave the unaccountable fact on our hands 
that Paul in his travels in all parts of the Empire, as far as 
his Epistles testify, ran upon no trace of this Gentile myth 
which, on this theory, was entrenching itself in Christian 
circles. There is no other known nascent belief antagonis- 
tic to the Gospel—whether Jewish Legalism, Gnosticism 
or one and another form of false philosophy—no social 
sin or religious discord among the Gentile Churches, that 
Paul does not know and does not rebuke. Here is a myth 
said to be in circulation that is closely related to right 
thinking upon the person of Jesus, an account of his birth 
made out of whole cloth that can be interpreted almost 
in contradiction to Paul’s own teaching, and not only is 
it not branded by him as an interloper in the Church of 
God but he does not even mention it. 

Every writer opposed to the acceptance of belief in the 
virgin birth stoutly insists that the silence of Paul in his 
Epistles concerning it is good evidence that such a belief 
was unknown to him and to the primitive Church. 
Granted that this argument is sound in principle, what 
conclusion ought to be drawn from his silence concerning 
this alleged Gentile myth, this extraordinary addition to 
the faith embodied in the Gospel that is said to have 
developed a sudden vogue in the Gentile Churches? It 
stands to reason that those who use the ‘“‘argument from 


64 BID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


silence’ on Paul’s part as ground for non-acceptance of thé 
belief of the Church in the virgin birth should not sud- 
denly become blind to its force nor obtuse to its pertinency 
when it is turned against the acceptance of belief in the 
Gentile myth we have been discussing. Paul’s silence con- 
cerning an alleged Gentile Christian myth which never 
acquired any standing among Jewish Christians calls for 
an accounting as much as his silence concerning the belief 
in the virgin birth which, it is acknowledged, prevailed in 
the primitive Church. 

Furthermore, in view of the constant communication 
back and forth among these early Churches, as the New 
‘Testament makes plain, it would seem to be well-nigh 
impossible for this alleged myth to spring up in one Gen- 
tile Christian group situated in Asia or Pamphylia or 
Macedonia, at Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica or any- 
where else, and spread to others without Luke, or Silas, or 
Barnabas, or any of the co-workers of Paul learning of 
its existence. Church leaders like these who were going 
to and fro among the Gentile Churches were also in con- 
stant communication with the Jewish Christians in Jeru- 
salem. Yet we are asked to believe that the story of the 
virgin birth did not originate in the Jerusalem Church, but 
in a pagan myth, taken over by various Gentile Churches 
—all myths were abhorrent to Jewish feeling and religious 
faith—and that in spite of such a parentage men like Silas, 
Barnabas or Paul failed to oppose it openly as a pagan 
adulteration of true apostolic teaching which degrades the 
incarnation of the Son of God to the base level character- 
istic of the stories of the gods. 

Nor is it easy to understand, nor does it seem possible 
to establish the hypothesis, that if Luke knew that this 
myth (a) was not indigenous to Christian faith, (b) 
rested on no foundation at all in actual fact, (c) formed 
no part of that which had been handed down to him by 


OBJECTIONS 65 


those who were “‘eye-witnesses’’ of Jesus’ life, but was 
only a product pure and simple of Gentile poetic feeling, 
he would still have used it at the very beginning of his 
Gospel as if it were the foundation of all he had to tell 
concerning the life of Jesus. This is not to say, of course, 
that it is unbelievable that miracle stories, local superstitions 
and other like spiritual dreams might have become mingled 
in back districts of remote provinces of the empire with 
some half-understood Christian doctrine, and afterward 
zealously defended by the Church at large. It is quite 
possible also that certain of their former pagan deities 
suffered a change of status and came to have the standing, 
in the minds of ignorant peasants, of Christian saints. 
The cult of Isis and Horus in Egypt might have developed 
in the end among only half-converted and ignorant Chris- 
tian peasants into the worship of Mary (the mother of 
Jesus) as “‘the Mother of God,” an appellation so vigor- 
ously but vainly denounced by Nestorius. Even so, what 
has all this to do with the historical truth as to the roots 
of the belief in the virgin birth? As Lord Acton wrote in 
a letter to Mary Gladstone: ‘‘A disposition to detect 
resemblances is one of the greatest sources of error.”"*7 The 
results may be entertaining, but the examples provided even 
by some eminent scholars should be sufficient to check 
further indulgence in this mischievous pastime. If there 
is one thing more than another that a student of history 
should carefully guard against, it is that chaos of thought 
which is the product of arguments based upon careless 
analogies. 

Another difficulty with this theory of the origin of the 
virgin birth in a pagan myth is occasioned by the time 
element. Myths do not spring up overnight. They are 
a growth and much time, therefore, is required for their 
maturing and general acceptance. But the period that 


1T Letters, etc. p. 177. 


66 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


elapsed between the preaching to the Gentiles and the 
writing by Matthew and Luke of the Gospels which con- 
tain the birth story was in nowise adequate for such a 
myth to have become full grown and widely accepted 
among Gentile Churches. 

The pertinent historical facts to which attention has 
been called and the inferences that have now been drawn 
from them are more than sufficient, we believe, to dispose 
of Wernle’s theory that a pagan myth is the responsible 
source of the birth story. For those who say it did origi- 
nate among Gentile Christians will have to admit that, 
even so, it must have been based either on the Christian 
preaching they had heard in person or on hearsay reports 
of it that had reached them. It certainly was not devoid 
of antecedents altogether. But who was the preacher to 
these Gentiles, and who founded these Gentile Churches, 
if not St. Paul himself? And if this alleged myth grew 
out of a misunderstanding of Paul’s teaching—assuming 
that he ever instructed his Gentile converts in detail of the 
biography of Jesus—as, for instance, the Thessalonians 
misapprehended his instruction concerning the coming of 
the Lord Jesus and the resurrection of the dead, why was 
it that Paul never took pains to correct their mistake as he 
did the erroneous conclusions of the Thessalonians? 

If, on the other hand, this supposed myth arose out of 
hearsay reports, vague rumors that gained currency among 
legend-loving Gentiles, what evidence can be brought for- 
ward to show that these reports, even so, were not true, 
i. e€., were not based upon the very same narratives which 
both Matthew and Luke were collecting in Palestinian 
circles? As a matter of fact, as Harnack says, “‘Nothing 
that is mythological in the sense of Greek or Oriental myth 
is to be found in these accounts; all here is in the spirit of 
the Old Testament, and most of it reads like a passage 
from historical books of that ancient volume.” 


“OBJECTIONS 67 


But these are not the only difficulties encountered by 
this myth theory of the virgin birth. Another disconcert- 
ing question confronts it: When did this ‘“‘myth”’ arise? 

If the story of the virgin birth was originally a Gentile 
myth, why should it have caused a division in the Jewish 
Christian Church during the apostolic period? How could 
it have created a situation so uncompromising that the 
successors or perpetuators of the Judaizing party, the 
Ebionites, separated on this very score from their fellow 
Christians? How otherwise is this separation to be ac- 
counted for? For Ebionitic belief, be it remembered, is 
directly traceable to the Judaizing element in Jerusalem. 
Strauss in his Life of Jesus, having shown that the gene- 
alogies of the ancestry of Jesus in Matthew belong to the 
time of the primitive Church, says: ‘‘Since in this way we 
discover both genealogies to be memorials belonging to the 
time and circle of the primitive Church in which Jesus was 
regarded as a naturally begotten man, the Sect of the 
Ebionites cannot fail to occur to us; as we are told con- 
cerning them that they held this view at this early 
period.’’18 

This, it will be observed in passing, also fixes in @ 
general way, as already indicated, the time when this belief 
in the virgin birth had become current in the Church and 
opposed by the Judaizing Christians. These Ebionites 
referred to by Strauss were successors to the old Jewish 
party in Jerusalem who, in loyalty to Moses, opposed 
Paul, and while accepting Jesus as the Messiah denied to 
the end his essential deity. 

Now, this Jewish party could not have been born before 
Paul had begun his mission to the Gentiles and made his 
missionary report of the results to the apostolic conference 
in Jerusalem. No occasion existed for the rise of such a 
loyalist party prior to Paul’s first venture into Gentile 
“Eng. Trans., p. 148. 


68 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


lands. This was about 47 A. D.1° About that time, how- 
ever, the pro-Jewish party originated which continued 
active in the Church till the Roman armies approached 
Jerusalem about 68 or 69 A.D. At that date, as Eusebius 
relates, Christians in Jerusalem and round about, remem- 
bering the warnings and predictions of Jesus? concerning 
the destruction of Jerusalem, fled to Pella?! beyond the 
Jordan in Perea. No Christians were caught in the net 
which Titus drew around the doomed city. The Church 
had heeded the warning and found safety in the Bactanea 
from the horrors of the siege, and remained in this retreat 
until long after Jerusalem had fallen. 

A second revolt of the Jews under Barchocheba during 
the early part of the reign of Hadrian brought upon them 
another terrible and most sweeping stroke of vengeance. 
They were now prohibited from even reentering the Holy 
City. In order to render this prohibition against the Jews 
effective, Hadrian erected a fane to Venus on the very site 
of the temple and placed over the Bethlehem gate an image 
of a pig, which no Jew would dare to approach lest he 
should be defiled. When the time came for the Church in 
exile to return to Jerusalem, the Ebionites, or Judaic ele- 
ment which still clung to the laws of Moses, were com- 
pelled, because of Hadrian’s decrees and repressive measures, 
to separate from their fellow Jewish Christians who fol- 
lowed the teaching of Paul, and were not held back by 
scruples concerning pagan statues or Mosaic laws of defile- 
ment. ‘These Pauline Jewish Christians joined the Gentile 
Christians in the new colony, Aelia Capitolina,?? which 
Hadrian had built on the ruins of Jerusalem and, by this 


79 All dates are tentative. For a careful study of dates in Paul’s life see Harnack, 
Chronologies; Weiseler, Chronology of the Apostolic Age, Eng. Trans.; Ramsay, St. 
Paul the Traveler; Lightfoot, Biblical Essays; Lewin, Fasti Sacri; Turner in Hastings’ 
Dictionary of the Bible. 

Luke xxi. 22. 

21 Ecclesiastical History, Vol. III, pp. 5-8. 

22See Neander, History of the Christian Religion During the Three First Centuries, 
p. 233; Milman, History of Christianity, Bk. II, Chap. II, 


q 


OBJECTIONS 69 


absolute abandonment of the ceremonial law of Moses, 
completed the separation. Thus was the primitive Church 
forever divided. It split on the question of Christ and 
the virgin birth. 

The Ebionite party continued its existence for some 
time, still clinging to Moses as the Lawgiver, and to Jesus 
as the Messiah, but denying the faith of the Church in his 
divinity. Throughout the second and third centuries and, 
even dragging on into the fourth, this dwindling sect, 
which still contended for the belief of their ancestors in 
the natural genealogy of Jesus, was finally lost in the 
shallows of history and forgotten. “‘At the end of the 
second century,” says Ernest Renan, “these good sectaries, 
having remained beyond the great current which had 
carried away other churches, were treated as heretics 
[Ebionites] and a pretended heresiarch Ebion was invented 
to explain their name.’’** 

Milman?‘ also remarks that ‘‘the rest of the Judaic 
Christian community at Pella, and in its neighborhood, 
sank into an obscure sect, distinguished by their obstinate 
rejection of the writings of Paul, and by their own Gospel, 
most probably the original Hebrew of St. Matthew.” 
Since the Gospel of Matthew, rejected by the Ebionites, 
contained the story of the virgin birth, because that was 
the part unacceptable to them, this constitutes clear evi- 
dence, it would seem, that our version of Matthew was 
written before the year 70 A.D. It is impossible to reject 
the unborn. 

It is plain, therefore, that the rejection of the virgin 
birth by this Judaizing party in Jerusalem is good evi- 
dence that it was known to the Church at that time. It 
is easy, of course, to affirm in the face of this evidence that 

23K {a fin du 1 le siecle ces bons sectaires demeurés en dehors ob grand courant 
qui avait emporté les autres Eglises, sont traités d’heretiques, Ebionites, et ont inventé 


pour expliquer leur nom un pretendu heresiarque ebion’”” (Vie de Jesus, p. 189). 
24 History of Christianity, Bk. Il, Chap. Il. 


70 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


it was not known to these Judaizers after the fall of 
Jerusalem; that all who had opposed Paul had passed away 
before the invasion of Palestine by the Roman armies; or 
that the last of that generation who had opposed him went 
with the Church into Perea. 

Even so, these assumptions will not carry much weight 
in view of the short period that elapsed between Paul’s 
day and the flight of the Church from Jerusalem. Paul 
suffered martyrdom in 64 A.D. Colossians, among the 
last Epistles which he wrote, gives no evidence that the 
Judaizing party which had persecuted him through his 
entire ministry were at that time all dead. At all events, 
available evidence demonstrates beyond a doubt that the 
distinctive beliefs of those Ebionites who separated from 
the main body of the Church do date back unbroken and 
unchanged to Paul’s day and to the day of the apostles. 
The siege of Jerusalem began 69 or 70 A.D. The united 
Church in Jerusalem fled from the city at that time. Paul 
was executed about 64 A. D. How brief the span, then, that 
separated these Ebionites from Paul’s day and the beliefs 
of the Jewish party of that time in Jerusalem and else- 
where! On this very point we may note that Harnack 
states,2> “‘every belief which at that time [that is, the end 
of the first century or the beginning of the second] was the 
common property of the Christians [including the Pales- 
tinian Churches] must be traced back to the Churches of 
Palestine, and must be ascribed to the first decades after 
the resurrection.”” How much more would this be true 
of the beliefs of the period immediately succeeding the 
destruction of Jerusalem! 

Nor does it in anywise solve the difficulty to assume 
that the belief in the virgin birth arose after the Jewish 
War, that is, later than 70 A.D., since the Gospels of 
Matthew and Luke, or Luke’s at any rate, had already 


25 Date of the Acts, etc., p. 148. 


OBJECTIONS Fil 


been published prior to that event. The narrative of the 
virgin birth was certainly included in both of these Gos- 
pels. It appears, therefore, unwarrantable to assign the 
origin of the virgin birth story to so late a period. The 
results of the most recent criticism on the various dates 
suggested for the book of Acts indicate that Acts was 
written before the year 70 A. D., even before the death of 
Paul, 64 A.D. This is undoubtedly the correct inference, 
since, if Acts was written after Paul’s death, there would 
be no way of accounting for the remarkable fact that Luke 
makes no mention in Acts of such an important event, but 
Paul is still preaching in Rome when he closes his record.”® 
Harnack says, “St. Luke’s absolute silence concerning 
everything that happened between the years 64 and 70 
A. D. is a strong argument for the hypothesis that the book 
was written before the year 64 A. D.””" 

But Luke’s Gospel, which contains the story of the 
virgin birth, was written. long before Acts was written by 
him. 

With all the data of previous critical investigation before 
him, Harnack states: ‘‘Since then there are no other rea- 
sons for a later date it follows that the strong arguments 
which favor the composition of the Acts before 70 A. D. 
now already apply in their full force to the Gospel of St. 
Luke, and it seems now to be established beyond question 
that both books of this great historical work were written 
while St. Paul was still alive.”’*° 

This, then, seems to dispose of the assumption of a late 
origin for the story of the virgin birth. It was not an 
invention either of those Christians, Jewish or Gentile, 
who went out from Jerusalem before the destruction of the 
city or of those who returned to it afterward, nor of any 


286 See Ramsay, The Teaching of St. Paul, etc., p. 346, for an exhaustive treatment 
of the subject. 

27 Dates of the Acts, etc., p. 100. 

%8 Ibid., p. 124. 


(Me DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


body of Christians later. The Ebionites who rejected the 
belief were an offshoot of the Judaizing element in Jeru- 
salem, and therefore it was in Jerusalem and among the 
Judaizing party in the Church that antagonism to the 
belief originated. “This confirms again our own conclu- 
sion, already stated, that the belief in the virgin birth had 
its origin in Jerusalem and that it was not a product of 
Gentile-Christian fancy. 

In further proof of this conclusion, if further proof is 
needed, and in accord with Harnack’s statement, we must 
seek a period antedating the last yeazs of Paul’s life for 
the beginning of Luke’s narrative. uke was the traveling 
companion of St. Paul. But Luke was in no position 
while journeying with the apostle from place to place, far 
away from the scenes of Jesus’ earthly life, to gather ma- 
terials for his Gospel. What was there to gather in 
Pamphylia or Macedonia? Such materials by the very 
nature of the case could be obtained only in Palestine amid 
scenes of the Gospel he was preparing to write, from the 
members of the primitive Church who knew the facts. 
Luke had to examine those who were “eye-witnesses.”’ 
Paul was martyred in 64 A.D. It is probable, therefore, 
that Luke was assembling his material and working on his 
Gospel when with Paul at Caesarea, 57-59 A. D.?9 

Probably Luke lived in the house of Philip, the evan- 
gelist, at Caesarea, and was thus within easy reach of 
Gospel scenes. It is evident, however, that he must have 
begun collecting his material a long while even before that 
date. If this is true, as seems to be the case, it leads to 
the same conclusion at which many critics of New Testa- 
ment writers have already arrived, namely, that the narra- 
tives in Matthew and Luke date back to the very beginning 


7 "And the next day we that were of Paul’s company departed, and came to 
Caesarea and we entered into the house of Philip, the Evangelist, which was one of 
the seven, and abode with him’ (Acts xxi. 8). See Meyer, Commentary, in loc.; 
Acts xxiii. 23. See Conybeare and Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paul; and Lewin, 
Life and Epistles, Vol. II, p. 692. 


OBJECTIONS 73 


of the primitive Church. Necessarily, then, the story of 
the virgin birth must have been current at that early date. 

It has been recently suggested, in order to meet and 
overcome certain linguistic difficulties, that Luke originally 
wrote his Gospel without any knowledge of the virgin 
birth, and later, having become better informed, interpo- 
Jated certain words into his text which changed his original 
story, which, it is alleged, attributed a natural birth to 
Jesus, into the Gospel account of the supernatural birth. 
But even if such were the case the interpolation nevertheless 
was his own. 

Whether this theory of an afterthought interpolation by 
Luke himself, for which there is no support, be true or 
not is immaterial to our present purpose of proving that 
the true story of Jesus’ birth was known to the primitive 
Church. For if Luke was ignorant of the virgin birth 
when he began writing his Gospel, as this interpolation 
theory presupposes, the belief was, nevertheless, in exist- 
ence among the members of the early Church. Otherwise 
he could not have learned of it later and inserted in his 
text the words in chapter i. 34, together with the whole 
narrative from the annunciation to the close. 

Such a theory on its face forces Luke to contra- 
dict himself, for he clearly states in the prologue to his 
Gospel that the facts he is about to relate were already 
well known; that they were ‘‘most surely believed 
[peplerophomenon, fully established] among us’’; that 
these facts were “delivered to us by those who were eye- 
witnesses’ (autoptai, seeing with their own eyes); and 
that because they were authentic they were matters for 
catechetical instruction. At the very outset of his Gospel 
Luke states that, ‘‘“Forasmuch as many have undertaken to 
set forth these things, it seemed good to me also [para- 
kolouthekoti anothen pasin akrivhos Kathezes], having 


74 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


accurately traced everything from the beginning, to write 
to thee Most Excellent Theophilus in an orderly manner 
that thou mayest know the certainty [asphaletn] of the 
things in which thou hast been instructed.”” But accord- 
ing to this interpolation theory this was really not the case. 
Luke, it is inferred, had not traced everything accurately, 
but had overlooked one of the most tremendous facts of. 
all, the supernatural birth of Christ, which, on becoming 
better informed, he inserted later. Writers may often sup- 
plement what they have already written with new mate- 
rial, but they do not leave an original declaration in such 
cases stand that they had traced with care everything 
concerning their subject from the beginning. Linguistic 
difficulties cannot legitimately be employed to upset all 
that Luke had written in his preface in the interest of a 
theory that he did not intend at first to write of the 
miraculous birth. 

In finally disposing of the theory that the virgin birth 
story originated as a Gentile-Christian myth, which has 
now been proven to be an impossibility, those who study 
the Hebrew tone and character of the narrations in Mat- 
thew and Luke may rest content with the statement of 
Harnack—who in all fairness, it should be said, does not 
believe in the virgin birth—that “‘a story of the birth of 
our Lord that had grown up freely in Gentile soil about 
the year 50 or 80 or 100 A. D. would certainly have been 
of quite a different character from the story of the first 
Gospel.’”” Even Lobstein, who holds that the Septuagint 
rendering of the Hebrew word almah, a young woman, 
by parthenos, a virgin, “‘paved the way for the religious 
construction adopted by the Evangelist,’’ is compelled to 
reject the hypothesis that the birth story grew out of a 
myth originating outside Jewish influences. 

No Gentile could by any power of imagination have 


OBJECTIONS 75 


invented the story as it is recorded in Matthew and Luke. 

The careful student of Scripture will observe that St. 
Luke’s testimony is not to be limited to the bare statement 
of the birth itself. It must be taken to include all the 
circumstantial details narrated preceding the birth of Jesus, 
such as the visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, the birth 
of John the Baptist and the intimate knowledge these holy 
women had of each other’s experiences. “The whole story 
as rendered by Luke produces the conviction that he was 
well aware of the extraordinary character of the events 
which he purposed to narrate, and although they were 
seemingly beyond human credibility—as for instance the 
exhortation of the Angel to Mary to have faith in God 
concerning the promise made to her—Luke nevertheless 
had carefully investigated them and was convinced of their 
truth. He says that the amazing announcement of the 
Angel to Mary was the impelling motive prompting her 
to journey all the way, even unaccompanied, from Naza- 
reth to the hill country of Judea, probably to Hebron, the 
city of the priests, to visit her cousin Elizabeth. When 
she arrives she is greeted with the astonishing news that 
an Angel of God had promised her cousin Elizabeth a son 
also. Mary had known nothing of the divine promise 
to Zacharias months before. Elizabeth, on the other hand, 
had known nothing of the experience of Mary in far-off 
Nazareth. But both although far separated by distance 
had been chosen of God for a definite purpose, the one to 
become the mother in the course of nature of an extraordi- 
nary prophet, the other through supernatural means to 
give birth to a divine human being—who “‘shall be called 
the Son of the Highest.” 

There were many stories current among the Gentiles 
ascribing the birth of illustrious men to the agency of the 


80 Harnack says, ““A Greek source cannot lie at the foundation of chapters i and ii of 
St. Luke’s Gospel’? (Luke the Physician, p. 215). 


76 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


gods, but where did this interposition of a virgin originate? 
If invented it was something quite new in the common 
lore of mythology, for no birth under like circum- 
stances was ever mentioned in the fables of the poets or 
the fairy tales of the myth-makers. What marvelous 
genius for embellishment the romancer must have had to 
add such circumstances as those said to attend the birth of 
the Baptist, the seemingly unrelated particular of the 
Angel standing at the “right side of the altar,’ the refer- 
ence to the priestly order of Zacharias’ course, which carries 
us back to the system prevailing in the daily service in the 
temple long before,*4 and which would have had no signifi- 
cance except to a Jew. With what care for particulars 
does he describe the wonder of the people that “‘he tarried 
so long in the temple’; the coming of the neighbors and 
kinsfolk, giving us unintentionally a glimpse of the social 
customs of the people. It is all so deftly woven, more- 
over, into the story of the birth of Jesus as to constitute 
with names, dates, place and incidents a complete history, 
a history so exact that had the supposed inventor erred 
even as to a date, had he, for instance, placed the date of 
Jesus’ birth a year or even a few months prior to the death 
of Herod, March 4, B. C., the entire chronology, not only 
of the New Testament, but also of Roman and Jewish 
history as related to events in Palestine, would have to be 
revised. 

That a Gentile, with a Gentile’s mental background, 
could—without a Jewish model before him for a guide— 
divest himself sufficiently of his pagan bias of thought to 
be able to compose a narrative like this, so deeply colored 
with Jewish modes of thought, feelings and expressions, 
seems a psychological impossibility. For the composition 
of the virgin birth narrative is so distinctively Hebraic in 
character as compared with all else in Luke’s Gospel that 


81]I Chron. 


OBJECTIONS hi 


even an amateur critic might spy it out at once from its 
setting as an original document inserted by Luke. 

Renan says the genealogies of Matthew are Hebraic; 
“the transcription of proper names are not from the 
Septuagint.’’*? Johannes Weiss certifies to the Hebraic dic- 
tion of Luke’s record. Godet says the documents of Luke 
preserve as faithfully as possible an Aramaic color, fidel- 
ment que possible le coloris arameen.** Zahn also affirms 
the Hebraic character of the narrative and holds that it 
must have originated in Palestine among Jewish Chris- 
tians. Dr. Mackintosh, in a recent work, states that the 
early chapters of Matthew and Luke are intensely Hebraic. 


They must have arisen in Palestinian circles. The 
attitude of the first century Christians to pagan tales 
regarding the celestial descent of Alexander the Great, 
Plato or Augustus can only have one of indignant 
horror. . . . Nor does it [that is, the evangelist’s 
narrative] come to us divorced from the rest of the 
evangelic story by a long precarious interval of years. 
On the contrary, even so radical a critic as Johannes 
Weiss has expressed the view that the contents of 
Luke i. and ii. may have circulated in the Jewish- 
Christian communities of Judea in the sixties.** 


If such a radical critic as Johannes Weiss makes this 
admission, then the theory that the story of the virgin 
birth was the product of myth-making Gentile-Christians 
must henceforth be considered, so far as New ‘Testament 
criticism is concerned, as no longer tenable. 

Before leaving this chief objection and hypothesis of 
Wernle, it may not be amiss to enter a protest against 
torturing the Greek text of Luke, as Dr. Theodor Keim** 

82 See Canon Gore, Dissertations, Note, p. 29. 
88 Ibid, p. 14. 


34 The Doctrines of the Person of Christ, p. 530. 
35 Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. IL, p. 46. 


78 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


does, so as to force from it a suggestion of mythological 
ideas. Nothing could be further from the purpose either 
of Matthew or Luke or their sources than such a notion. 
The attempt of Keim to force the pagan conception of a 
god having intercourse with a woman—as in the fables of 
Alexander and Plato and others—into the Greek of St. 
Luke, is an illustration of a method which had better be 
avoided. 

Keim says: “Luke following his source of information 
draws a more sensuous picture of the heavenly mystery; 
the Holy Ghost descended upon her [Mary]: the power 
of the Highest visibly overshadowed her in the form of 
a cloud in which the hidden God comes near to mortal 
men: the fruit of this proximity is the child she bears 
beneath her bosom.’’*® 

In justice to the Evangelist it should be noted that this 
misrepresentation of what he wrote is solely the invention 
of the learned Dr. Keim. Luke does not give any ground 
for Keim’s romancing or contain the slightest suggestion 
that the power of God would be visible, or that a ‘“‘cloud” 
containing the ‘‘hidden God’’ would overshadow the 
virgin. All this crude, coarse caricature is absolutely for- 
eign to the declaration of the Angel and to the statement 
of the evangelist. 

The verb episkiadso does signify, in the infinitive, ‘‘to 
overshadow.” But this does not authorize Keim and 
others to cite as parallels to passages in Greek mythology 
such Scriptural ideas as that the Holy Ghost descended 
upon her; that the power of the Highest visibly “‘over- 
shadowed her in the form of a cloud.’”’ Hebrew thought 
conceived of God creative, as God the Holy Spirit. This 

% See Fuerst, Lexicon, 1286. Harnack notes the original conception “‘of the Holy 
Spirit’ where ‘Spirit’? in Semitic is of the feminine gender and therefore excludes all 
of the sexual. ‘Mythology is not only not forgotten in the Greek Gospel of Hebrews, 


but has in many other quarters set a bridle on the imagination’ (Date of the Acts, 
etc., p. 45). 


OBJECTIONS 79 


idea is present everywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, but 
no Hebrew ever conceived of the Spirit of God begetting, 
as the Greeks declared of their gods. The very language 
of the people is at variance with such a conception, for in 
the Aramaic and Hebrew, ‘“‘Spirit’’ is feminine.** Again, 
Spirit as power is not visible, nor has it shape or form 
“like a cloud.” 

Nor does Luke so report the promise of the angel (and 
be it remembered there are no angels in Greek or Roman 
mythology). Instead of suggesting relations between gods 
and men similar to those of mythology, this story of the 
virgin birth rather reminds us of Gen. i. 2, since the angel 
expressly declares that God will accomplish his will by his 
creative power, without the aid of man, 


CHAPTER III 
MISINTERPRETATION 


The second chief objection to the acceptance of the virgin 
birth contends that the narratives recorded by Matthew 
and Luke regarding it are not statements of fact, but rather 
the product of religious reflection and pious fancy based 
upon an erroneous interpretation of Isaiah vii. 14. This 
objection, it will be observed, differs in character from that 
of Wernle and the Mythologists, who seem to forget that 
in all Grecian and Roman mythology mo clear case occuts 
of birth from a virgin. 

The chief exponent of this second objection is the illus- 
trious scholar, historian and critic, Adolf von Harnack, of 
Berlin. His theory is that the idea that Jesus was born 
of a virgin was a by-product of three chapters in the life 
of Jesus: (1) The energy of the Holy Ghost in raising 
Him from the dead. (2) The story of the transfiguration 
in which He was proclaimed by the voice from heaven to 
be the Beloved Son in whom God was well pleased. (3) 
The descent of the Spirit at the baptism. 

Reflection upon these three occasions, says Harnack, 
would naturally raise the question: When did Jesus be- 
come the Son of God? Harnack’s theory expressed in his 
own words is that the answer, “‘at his birth,” 


did not displace the three others [above] which 

maintained themselves in peaceful juxtaposition 

(indeed, they did not absolutely exclude one another 

seeing that it was a question of the outpouring of the 

Spirit which could happen again and again). How- 

ever, the very fact that these views continued to exist 
80 


MISINTERPRETATION 81 


side by side is a guarantee that the new view was 
not an intruder from the sphere of heathen myth- 
ology, but a logical conclusion from the belief that 
our Lord was God’s Son by the operation of the 
Holy Spirit. . . . But the conviction that our Lord 
was born of the Holy Spirit did not, according to 
Jewish ideas, involve the exclusion of an earthly 
father any more than an earthly mother, although 
“ruach”’ is feminine. 

Hence one may, indeed must, cherish very serious 
doubts as to whether the idea of the virgin birth 
would have made its appearance on Jewish soil if it 
had not been for Isaiah vii. 14.1 


This really amounts to a declaration that an erroneous 
interpretation of Isaiah vii. 14 was responsible for this 
belief in the virgin birth of our Lord; of a truth, it is 
alleged, there was no such birth. The accounts of Mat- 
thew and Luke were not recitals of facts, but mere fables 
that arose from the pious reflection that the Jesus who 
was raised by the Spirit from the dead, proclaimed by the 
Spirit as the Beloved Son and crowned by the Spirit on his 
baptism must have become the Son of God at his birth 
by the Spirit. 

With this supposition of Harnack’s, which does not 
account satisfactorily for the origin of either the doctrine 
itself or of the narratives recounting the birth, Paul Lob- 
stein, Professor of Dogmatics in the University of Stras- 
burg and the representative of French liberalism on this 
subject, is in substantial agreement: 


The Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible ren- 
dered the word Almah which cannot mean virgin 
(Comp. Cant. vii. sq. and especially Prov. xxx. 19 
sq.) by Parthenos; thus they paved the way for the 


1 Date of the Acts, etc., pp. 144. 145. 


82 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


religious construction adopted by the evangelist... . 
It is therefore unnecessary to resort to the hypothesis 
of pagan influences or of Hellenic or Oriental factors 
in order to explain the origin of the belief in the | 
supernatural birth of Christ. The tradition conse- 
crated by our Gospels, the myth with which faith 
in the Divine Sonship of Jesus is poetically invested, 
has its roots deep down in Israel’s religion trans- 
formed by the new faith. The dogma of the super- 
natural birth is the result of the union of traditional 
interpretation with the Christian principle.* 


Our observation upon this theory is that it depends too 
much upon far-fetched invention. Against the hard facts 
of practical life, it breaks up and is destroyed. For the 
argument advanced in its support takes no account of the 
presence of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Jerusalem while 
this assumed development of thought in regard to the per- 
son of Jesus is going on, nor of the Association of the 
apostles, especially John, with the Jerusalem Church, as 
directors of the trend of its faith. 

In order to enable this theory of Harnack’s to stand on 
its feet, it is necessary to assume that Mary and the apostles 
were all dead before it was born, which would be contrary 
to Harnack’s own teaching. For it would throw all dates 
in Luke’s Gospel far into the close of the first century. 
Or else we must say these apostles were absent from the 
city for long periods and ignorant, therefore, of this new 
departure. Otherwise we would have to conclude that 
they were acquiescent in, or indifferent to, this new view 
of the birth of Jesus which, it is said, had sprung up right 
among their own company. And that, of course, could 
hardly be. 


Did not Mary know the facts?, Really the effort is too 


os 


®The Virgin Birth, p. 75. 


MISINTERPRETATION 83 


confusing to think through the logical consequences of 
such a dream as that of Harnack and Lobstein. If the facts 
that Mary knew were those afterward narrated by Mat- 
thew and Luke, how could the Church in Jerusalem deny 
them and not stand corrected? If the narratives were not 
narratives of fact, how did the Church come to have any- 
thing to do with them? Under what necessity was it to 
invent a virgin birth story? Did not the supreme facts of 
the resurrection of Christ and of the outpouring of the 
Spirit demonstrate beyond peradventure the divine nature 
of Christ? 

At this point, the time element again becomes a deter- 
mining factor. For this supposed new departure must 
have spread with lightning speed, indeed, among the people 
in the few years between the days of the resurrection and 
the time when Luke began to gather material for his con- 
templated Gospel. Notoriously, doctrinal developments, 
however, do not proceed thus rapidly. Moreover, we must 
ask in all candor, how could those persons from whom 
Luke in his investigation obtained his facts have known 
that there would develop in the immediate future this idea 
of the Spirit birth to which, in connection with stating 
their own beliefs, they were to contribute a tale that was 
in the nature of a legend and not fact? If, on the other 
hand, Luke’s informants did not know, that is, were not 
endowed with divine foresight to anticipate this develop- 
ment which is alleged to have occurred in later thought 
concerning when Jesus became the Son of God, were 
Matthew’s informants any better able to foresee it? Did 
they, too, act on the same principle and, accordingly, tell 
the same story? Did this development of thought in 
regard to the date that Jesus became the Son of God begin 
and run its course independent of the facts concerning his 
birth which Luke was gathering? Did Luke and Matthew 
and their informants give currency to this story they tell 


84 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


and others later on make it fit into this development which 
was going on independent of them? 

If the apparent facts later recorded by the evangelists 
were not facts at all, it is reasonable to presume that Mary 
the mother of Jesus would have denied them from the 
first, had she been then living. And if she was not living, 
the apostles who were still in Jerusalem—certainly John, 
in whose home she had resided,? or James, “‘the Lord’s 
brother’’—would have refuted these reports of a virgin 
birth, and the belief in it as a cardinal event in the life of 
Jesus would not have come down to us. The truth that 
strikes home at this point is that there was no conceivable 
motive for anyone to invent the story of the virgin birth, 
nor any excuse, if it were a fiction, for ever allowing a 
pious fancy of that kind, purely superfluous at the time 
of its invention, to live on. The presence of the mother 
of Jesus in the Jerusalem Church would have made the 
circulation of such a fictitious story of her son’s birth 
wholly impossible. The mother of such a man could not 
have been ignored in so important a question of fact. 

We cannot smoothly glide over the absence of the time 
element necessary to this ‘‘development’’ of which Harnack 
speaks. A period of years would have been necessary for 
religious brooding over the relation of the Spirit to the life 
‘of Jesus to spread and any one particular outcome of such 
brooding and speculation be so generally accepted as to 
become finally an article of faith in the Jerusalem Church. 
It would also have taken much time for emphasis on this 
belief to have become so pronounced and so vital as to 
cause numbers of the Jewish-Christians in Jerusalem to 
reject it openly. But the only interval we have at our 
disposal is that short interval between Pentecost and the 
rise of the Judaizing party. Evidently this is too short a 
time for the growth of such an extraordinary belief—a 


8 John xix. 29. 


MISINTERPRETATION 85 


belief not at all necessary to faith in Jesus as the Messiah 
of God, as the rejection of it by the Judaizing party abun- 
dantly proves. For while they denied the virgin birth, 
they still believed in the Messiahship of Jesus. Even if 
we extend the time, as it is insisted we must, we are in 
no better plight, for that brings us right into the years 
that Luke was gathering his source material, and makes 
the virgin birth part of “‘those things (already) most 
surely believed among us.” 

We turn now to the assertion that it is to be seriously 
doubted ‘‘whether the idea of the virgin birth would have 
ever made its appearance on Jewish soil if it had not been 
for Isaiah vii. 12.’’ Aside from the fact that such an 
assertion begs the question, for it assumes that the virgin 
birth did not occur, any application of this prophetic pas- 
sage to the birth of Jesus is proof at once that the belief 
itself in the reality of the virgin birth of the Lord had 
previously arisen. Certainly no account of the details of 
the birth of Jesus was written before its occurrence. At 
the time of its occurrence pious Israelites, we may safely 
say, did not think of connecting it with the prophecy of 
Isaiah. Nor does the translation of this verse in the 
Septuagint, in which the Greek word “virgin” is found 
instead of the Hebrew word for “young woman,”’ alter 
this conclusion. The facts in regard to that birth were 
known certainly by the holy women, and the prophecy 
was employed in their support or it would have been a 
case of pure invention and the application of the prophecy 
to a known fiction. But that is unthinkable except under 
great pressure, and where was the necessity? And what 
evidence, after all, is there that this passage from Isaiah 
Was ever interpreted by anyone at the time of our Lord as 
meaning that the Messiah should be born of a virgin? 
None whatever. 

Furthermore, the hypothesis that this quotation from 


86 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH?, 


Isaiah supplied the initial foundation for belief in the 
virgin birth leaves us wholly in the dark concerning the 
presence of Joseph in the evangelist’s narrative. No father 
is mentioned in Isaiah vii. 14, nor is the Holy Spirit. 
Neither does this hypothesis account for the annunciation, 
nor the contemplated divorce, nor the information given 
by the Angel to Joseph in a dream, nor for any other of 
the details of the extraordinary event. 

On these terms, it is hard to see how the presence of 
these other elements in the narratives can be accounted for 
except on the assumption that the evangelists invented the 
whole story, although its central figure was their divine 
Lord, knowing at the time they did so that it had no solid 
basis in historic fact. What literary artists in that case 
they must have been! Or if it be said that they did not 
invent the story, nor did they know it was unhistorical, 
how they must have been duped! To begin with, there 
was no need for such a story. What motive is forthcom- 
ing to account for it? If belief in a normal birth of Jesus 
through Spirit influences, as in the case of Samuel or of 
Samson, had become the fixed faith of the Church, it 
would have made the task of the evangelists much easier, 
and certainly would have been more helpful to the spread 
of the Gospel among the Jews. This account would have 
seemed a more reasonable one, and, unless Jewish human 
nature has changed, the rational direction also that the 
Jewish mind would have taken, except incontrovertible 
facts to the contrary had stood in the way. Such a belief 
in a divinely influenced natural birth would have been so 
in harmony with Jewish thought and Jewish Scriptures 
that it would not later have become one of the chief factors 
in fomenting the Ebionite or Unitarian schism. For, as 
Harnack correctly states—and there are Old Testament 
passages to prove its truth—‘‘The conviction that our 
Lord was born of the Spirit did not, according to Jewish 


MISINTERPRETATION 87. 


ideas, involve the exclusion of an earthly father any more 
than an earthly mother.” 

But, instead, we are asked to believe that a course was 
taken which was contrary to what was natural to the 
Jewish mind, for which no real motive or necessity in the 
situation is assigned, and the miraculous birth of Jesus 
affirmed even from the very beginning of the primitive 
Church in Jerusalem. Do men go out of their way and 
counter to the natural bent of their minds and their estab- 
lished religious beliefs to invent a story full of details— 
dates, names and events to match—for which there was no 
need and which therefore could have served no purpose 
whatever in which they were interested at the time it was 
invented! 

It is asserted by some who deny the supernatural birth 
—and the assertion is commonly accredited in certain cir- 
cles—that the reason why Isaiah vii. 14 was first wrongly 
interpreted by the primitive Church and then misapplied 
to Jesus, is that ‘popular imagination’’ or pious fancy 
conjectured that He must of necessity have been born in 
a supernatural manner. This opinion has the support of 
some eminent scholars. Others equally eminent, however, 
dissent from such a view. The points urged are these: 

(1) That Isaiah did not speak of a virgin at all. The 
Hebrew word that he would have used had he prophesied 
of a virgin is be’ thulah, whereas he employed the word 
“almah,” which does not signify ‘‘virgin’’ but “young 
woman.” 

(2) That he was not referring to a Messiah seven 
hundred and fifty years in the future, for this would have 
been no consolation to King Ahaz in the struggle which 
he was then waging with the kings of Israel and Syria. 

(3) That Isaiah did not refer to a Messiah at all, but 
in order to give a sign of assurance to Ahaz that his con- 
flict with the kings would terminate happily, he simply 


88 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


declared that before a child—any child born the day he 
was speaking—was fully weaned, the fortunes of the king 
would be changed for the better. 

It will be observed that the supposition upon which 
these several exegetical statements are all built goes unchal- 
lenged, that the prophet Isaiah did really give a sign to 
the king, notwithstanding the refusal of Ahaz to ask for a 
sign, and that this prophecy of a child to be born seven 
centuries later was that sign. Now, it must be admitted 
that this would be a sign of no emergency value to Ahaz. 
But that is the prime question. Did Isaiah give any sign, 
any prophecy whatever to King Ahaz? There does not 
appear to be sufficient warrant for the contention that he 
did. Ahaz refused point blank to ask for any sign from 
the Lord, and in consequence of his blunt refusal the 
prophet did not force one upon him. Once he had made 
the offer in such solemn and all-comprehensive terms, and 
it had been rejected, he turned abruptly from the skeptical 
king and addressed his prophesy to the whole nation: 


Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, 
Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either 
in the depth, or in the height above. But Ahaz said, 
I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. And 
he [Isaiah] said, Hear ye now, O house of David; 
Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will 
you weary my God also? ‘Therefore the Lord him- 
self shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall con- 
ceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name 
Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he 
may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. 
For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, 
and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest 
shall be forsoken of both her kings.* 


“Is, vii. 10-16. 


MISINTERPRETATION 89 


Various explanations intended to show that Isaiah 
referred to some child in the immediate future have been 
advanced. But none of these explanations explains. 
Peake® thinks that Isaiah predicts that some young woman 
shall bring forth a son and, in token of her faith, shall 
call his name Immanuel. But that supposition does not 
yield much satisfaction. How could such a commonplace 
event be a sign to Ahaz? In order to find out if the child 
so predicted was ever born—for before this child shall 
know the difference between good and evil the land Ahaz 
abhorred shall be forsaken of its kings—and that he was 
really named Immanuel by his mother, Ahaz would have 
had to keep a register of every birth in his kingdom. 
Others think the prediction of Isaiah pointed to the birth 
of Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, and that the young woman 
referred to was the king’s wife. But if II Kings xviii. 2 
is to be depended upon, Hezekiah was twenty-five years 
of age when he came to the throne, and therefore he was 
living at the time the prophecy was uttered, which was 
about 734 B.C. Critics belonging to the school of Kuenen 
and Robertson Smith are of the opinion that almah may 
refer to any young woman, and then it would be no sign 
at all, for scores of _Immanuels could be found scattered 
through the land, since every new-born child might be 
called Immanuel if its mother chose, 

If the statement of Zahn® is correct, as seems to be the 
case, viz., that the Jews of the generation preceding the 
time of Christ did not regard this verse of Isaiah as Mes- 
sianic, it is nevertheless true that, when knowledge of the 
virgin birth did become public, Jewish-Christians at once 
turned, as did Matthew in his Gospel, to this prophecy of 
Isaiah and applied it to the event. “They connected the 
two and saw in the one the fulfillment or verification of 


5In Hastings’ Dictionary, “Christ and the Gospels,’’ I, 783. 
6 Commentary on Matthew. 


90 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


the other. The prophecy did not create the belief in the 
virgin birth, but public knowledge of the virgin birth did 
soon suggest an interpretation and application of that verse 
in Isaiah more in harmony with Messianic predictions of 
ancient times than were the rabbinic interpretations of that 
same verse in Christ’s time. Oehler notes the parallel 
between the passage Micah v. 3 and the prophecy of 
Isaiah vii. 14 as to the birth of Immanuel from the young 
wife or virgin (almah), a passage whose reference to the 
Messiah is rendered unmistakable by its connection with 
ix. 5, though the prevailing interpretation at present 
regards it as only typically Messianic. ‘“‘Almah indeed is 
not be’ thulah, as if the birth of Messiah from the virgo 
illibrata were here taught. Besides, the essential feature of 
the given sign is not the fact that an almah conceives but 
that the Messiah is Immanuel.’’* Driver,’ Briggs, Cheyne, 
Ewald, Hengstenburg, Delitzsch and many other scholars 
interpret Isaiah vii. 14 just as did the Jewish Christian in 
Jerusalem. Our conclusion is that this verse in Isaiah 
could not have been the source of the virgin birth, but 
once the birth of Jesus from a virgin came to public knowl- 
edge, Christians soon connected it with this verse in Isaiah 
and regarded it as a fulfillment. 


7 Old Testament Theology, Sec. 231. 
® Commentary on Isaiah, p. 42. 


CHAPTER IV 
INTERPOLATION 


The third objection to the acceptance of the virgin birth 
which we have to consider is that the narratives concerning 
it are interpolations subsequently inserted in the original 
text. Thus Usener in the Encyclopedia Biblica insists that 
“the two verses in Luke i. 34, 35, the only verses in Luke 
in which the supernatural birth of Jesus is stated, are 
incompatible with the rest of Luke i. 2, and this must 
have been interpolated. With these two removed, what 
remains is a purely Jewish-Christian account of the birth 
of the Messiah, still resting upon the foundation of the 
old and genuine tradition that Jesus was the offspring— 
the first-born offspring—of the marriage of Joseph and 
Mary.” 

What remains, however, is far from 4 self-consistent 
account of a natural birth. Many other statements occur 
in the early chapters of Matthew and Luke which relate 
to the miraculous birth and lose all meaning whatever if 
the story of the supernatural birth is omitted. In direct 
opposition to this suggestion of Usener, which is by no 
means new, Dr. James Moffatt in his Introduction to the 
Literature of the New Testament says that while omissions 
in Luke i, 34, 35, are possible, in Matthew, on the other 
hand, “‘no hypothesis of literary criticism or textual emen- 
dation can disentangle the conception of a virgin birth 
from a story which is wrought together and woven on one 
loom.’’? 

Two questions call for settlement here: (1) If these 


1Pp. 250, 251. ‘‘Neither the style nor the contents of i.-ii. [Matthew's Gospel] 
affords valid evidence for suspecting that they are a later insertion in the Gospel.” 


91 


92 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


narratives are interpolations, were they the work of Jewish- 
Christians or Gentile-Christians? And (2) when were 
these interpolations inserted? 

That the birth story in Matthew is not an interpolation 
made by Jewish-Christians is plain from the fact that the 
Ebionites rejected that whole Gospel on the ground that 
the story of the virgin birth was part and parcel of it and 
discredited it. Nor will it do to say that it was an inter- 
polation in Luke made by Gentile-Christians, for then we 
would have no way left to account for the immediate 
rejection of the Gospel of Matthew on its appearance by 
the Ebionites, if that earliest draft of this Gospel did not 
contain the birth story. Surely the Ebionites would not 
have felt called upon to reject Matthew’s Gospel although 
it did not contain the birth story, which they did not 
believe, simply because Luke’s Gospel gave asylum to it. 

Then, again, when could this alleged interpolation have 
been inserted? Was it made in Luke’s Gospel, with which 
Wwe are now concerned, while he was living or after his 
death? We do not know what year Luke died, but we 
do know that he lived, at any rate, to complete his histori- 
cal work, the Book of Acts. We know that his Gospel 
was written before he wrote the Acts of the Apostles, that 
is, before 70 A.D. It is, therefore, quite probable that 
had his Gospel been tampered with, Luke lived long 
enough to have it brought to his attention. 

Is it likely, in that event, that in writing his Book of 
Acts Luke would have made no reference to the false addi- 
tions that meddlesome third parties were making to his 
former work? In his address to Theophilus he makes 
mention of his Gospel. A copy of that manuscript, indeed, 
he sent immediately to Theophilus. Suppose, now, that 
this copy sent to Theophilus did not contain the narrative 
of the virgin birth. That makes a possible date for the 
interpolation relatively late and throws us back on the 


INTERPOLATION 93 


question, How can we account for the belief of the primi- 
tive Church in the virgin bicth, ‘That such a belief was 
current long before the Gospel was written has already 
been clearly shown, and it continued a common belief later. 
Now, it is historically true, as Harnack states, that every 
such belief ‘“‘must be traced back to the Churches of Pales- 
tine, and must be ascribed to the first decades after the 
resurrection.”” But it is not possible to trace this belief 
back to the primitive Church if it originated in an interpo- 
lation in Luke’s Gospel with which Luke himself was 
unacquainted at the time he wrote his Book of Acts. 

We must ask those who still insist that this belief did 
not exist in the primitive Church, and was unknown to 
the New Testament writers, to set a time and circle for its 
first appearance. This is the rock upon which the case of 
the deniers of the virgin birth goes to pieces. If they fix 
the date later than 70 A.D., difficulty at once arises from 
the fact that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were 
already in circulation. Any attempt, therefore, at an 
interpolation of such a character in both Gospels would 
have been utterly useless, for it could not have been done 
without the whole Church becoming aware of the fact. 
The Church was quick to discover and denounce the muti- 
lations by Marcion in Luke’s Gospel and the Pauline Epis- 
tles. How could these interpolations under discussion here 
have escaped detection and similar exposure? 

Now, in answer to the first question, and in order that 
every possible theory may have a hearing, let it be sup- 
posed that the source of the information that Jesus was 
born of a virgin was the group of Jewish-Christians who 
fled from Jerusalem at the approach of the Roman armies, 
69 A.D., and returned under Hadrian about 117 A.D.? 
Some scholars are of the opinion that these Christians 


2 For an interesting account of this event and statements of early authorities relative 
to the subject in the text, see Harnack’s Expansions of Christianity, Vol. II, pp. 
247-271. 


94 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


preserved among themselves the genuine teachings of Jesus 
free of all adulteration by what is erroneously termed the 
Christianized Rabbinism of Paul. Renan states that ‘“The 
collection of the Logia or discourses of Jesus was made 
in the Ebionite medium of the Bactanea,’’ and quotes 
Epiphanius, Against Heresies, as his authority, an opinion, 
however, which cannot be accepted, because of the early 
date which criticism has now firmly established for the 
writing of the Gospels. But the claim that belief in the 
virgin birth originated among these Jewish-Christians 
cannot be accepted, for the reason that long before the 
year 117 A.D. it was held and taught by widely scattered 
Gentile-Christians far remote from the Bactanea. 

In order to understand the significance of this historical 
fact and appreciate fully all that is involved in it, we are 
here again led back to the apostolic Church in Jerusalem 
as the source of this belief in the miraculous birth, and to 
its first persecution and dispersion as recorded in Acts viii. 
1-5 5751,5197.20. 


At that time there was 4 great persecution against 
the Church which was at Jerusalem; and they were 
all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea 
and Samaria except the Apostles. . . . Then Philip 
went down to Samaria and preached Christ unto 
them. . . . Now they that were scattered abroad 
upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, trav- 
eled as far as Phenice and Cyprus and Antioch preach- 
ing the Word to none but unto the Jews only. ... 
And some of these were of Cyprus and Cyrene which 
when they were come to Antioch spake unto the 
Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. 


What was the date of this persecution? Few com- 
mentators agree exactly on dates. Kuienen, Olshausen, 
Ewald and others fix upon 33 A.D. More recent scholars, 


"y 


INTERPOLATION 95 


such as Harnack, Ramsay and Bacon, differ by some few 
years. Sometime before 40 A. D., perhaps as early as 33 
A. D., the disciples were driven out of Jerusalem and scat- 
tered abroad. In 110 A.D., however, or a little later, 
Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, while on his way to martyr- 
dom in Rome, declared to all the Churches as he passed on 
has journey, that the mystery of the virgin birth was 
preached, with the mystery of the death of our Lord, as 
an article of Christian belief. To the Church at Ephesus 
he writes, ‘“‘Now the virginity of Mary hidden from the 
prince of this world as was also her offspring, and the 
death of the Lord, these mysteries of renown which were 
wrought in silence by God.’”® 

To the Trallians he writes, “Stop your ears, therefore, 
when anyone speaks to you at variance with Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God, who was descended from David, and was 
also of Mary; who was begotten of God and of the virgin 
but not after the same manner.’’4 

To the Church at Smyrna he writes that they are ‘‘fully 
persuaded with respect to our Lord Jesus Christ, that he 
was truly of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and 
the Son of God according to the will and power of God; 
that he was truly born of a virgin.” 

This holy man was Bishop of Antioch, where the dis- 
ciples were first called Christians. That city was the mis- 
sionary headquarters of Paul, Silas, Barnabas, Luke and 
other leaders of the primitive Church. Between the 
Church at Antioch and the Church at Jerusalem there was 
constant communication during the period covered by the 
Book of Acts. 

Now, who will say that Ignatius, the Bishop of 
Antioch, did not have opportunity to learn what had been 
the belief of the Church of Antioch from its founding? 


~ 


8Ephes. xix. 
*Ep. to the Trall. ix. 


96 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


Had the belief in the virgin birth sprung up during his 
presidency of the Antioch Church, he would have branded 
it as a spurious belief not contained in the teachings deliv- 
ered by the Fathers of the Church, and therefore it could 
not have been incorporated in the creed of the Church 
along with the ‘‘mystery’’ of the death of our Lord. 

Then, again, was the year 110 A.D. so far removed 
from apostolic days that an aged man like Ignatius in his 
youth could not have seen and heard the great leaders of 
the Antiochian Church? Forty years only had passed since 
the destruction of Jerusalem. Paul had died only a few 
years before that event. Could not Ignatius have known 
Luke and Barnabas in his boyhood? This line of reason- 
ing makes it evident that in the Church at Antioch belief 
in the virgin birth must have extended back to the very 
days of the apostles and the events recorded in the Book 
of Acts. And where did Antioch get this belief except 
from the teachings of those members of the Church of 
Jerusalem in Pentecostal days who fled at the dispersion to 
Antioch, as well as everywhere else, preaching the Word? 
Knowledge of the virgin birth was public property not 
only to the Church in Antioch, but also in the Gentile 
Churches at Ephesus, at Tralles and at Smyrna, before the 
Jewish-Christians separated from their fellow Christians 
at the second destruction of Jerusalem, under Hadrian. It 
could not, therefore, have originated among Christian 
exiles during their sojourn in the Bactanea. 

Other evidence is not wanting to the same effect. Ac- 
cording to Acts viii. 1, some of the disciples who were 
scattered abroad during the persecution went into Samaria: 
“Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached 
Christ unto them.’”” He went from the Church at Jeru- 
salem, it will be noted, in those marvelous days when the 
Spirit was mighty in the Church and while the apostles, 
and Mary the mother of Jesus, were still numbered in its 


ee ae eS A Se ee eee 


Pe — a ee 


INTERPOLATION 97 


membership. Now, it is significant in this connection that 
Justin Martyr, one of the earliest defenders of the belief 
in virgin birth against the Ebionites, came from Samaria. 
This philosopher was born at Flavia Neopolis, a city of 
Samaria, about 114 A.D. After his conversion he traveled 
extensively. He visited Ephesus and Rome, where he 
finally settled and was martyred, probably 165 A. D. 

It is fair to assume that he knew the faith of the 
Churches where he sojourned, especially at Ephesus and 
Rome. He knew the faith of the Christians in his native 
Samaria, and the Gospel that had been preached to them. 
But the belief of these Churches also must have extended 
in an unbroken line to the days of the apostles. Nor had 
so long a period of time intervened that the original teach- 
ings could have been forgotten. It is clear from Justin’s 
writings that in all the Churches he visited he found the 
same essentials of belief, and that the virgin birth which 
he defended against the attacks of Trypho, the Jew, was 
included in that common faith. In his Dialogue with 
Trypho he says, referring to the Ebionites, “‘ ‘For there are 
some, my friends,’ I said, ‘of our race who admit that He 
is the Christ, while holding Him to be a man of men; 
with whom I do not agree, nor would I, even [if] most 
of those who have [now] the same opinion as myself 
should say so since we were enjoined by Christ Himself 
to put not faith in human doctrines, but in those pro- 
claimed by the blessed Prophets and taught by Himself.’ ’’6 

In his First Apology, also, Justin sets forth the faith 
of the Church. 


It was this [that is, the Word of God] which, 
when it came upon the virgin and overshadowed her, 
caused her to conceive, not by intercourse, but by 
power. . . . For things which were incredible and 


® Chap. XLVIIIL. 


98 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


seemed impossible with men, those God predicted by 
the Spirit of Prophecy as about to come to pass, in 
order that, when they were come to pass, there might 
be no unbelief, but faith because of their prediction. 
But lest some, not understanding the Prophecy now 
cited, should charge us with the very things we have 
been laying to the charge of the poets who say that 
Jupiter went into women through lust, let us try to 
explain the words. This, then, ‘Behold, a virgin 
shall conceive,”’ signifies that a virgin should conceive 
without intercourse. For if she had intercourse with 
any one whatever she was no longer a virgin; but 
the power of God having come upon the virgin, 
overshadowed her, and caused her while yet a virgin 
to conceive.® 


This is the faith of a representative Christian of his day. 
He was writing in defense of fellow Christians and died a 
martyr to the faith. He grew up in Samaria. He dwelt 
for some time in Ephesus. Did he not learn during his 
sojourn with them the faith of that Church in Ephesus 
in which were teachers who but yesterday had listened to 
the apostle John? He lived in Rome for a season also and 
doubtless became acquainted with the leaders of that 
Church. It is generally held that Clement, the friend 
and co-worker of St. Paul, who wrote his Epistle to the 
Corinthian Church about 97 A. D. was for some time the 
chief pastor of the Church at Rome. Did Justin, then, 
not learn the faith of this Church, and did not this faith 
rest upon the word of living witnesses separated by only 
a few years from Paul’s day? 

Let us turn back a moment to the Asiatic Churches. 
Ignatius on his way to Rome 110 A. D. visited the Church 
at Smyrna. Here he wrote those Epistles to the Ephesians 


— 


©Semisch, Justin Martyr, Chap. XLIII. 


INTERPOLATION 99 


and to the Trallians in which he referred to the virgin 
birth. Polycarp was Bishop of the Church in Smyrna at 
this time, and according to Irenaeus, who was his disciple, 
“Polycarp was instructed by the apostles themselves and 
was brought in contact with many who had seen Christ.’’? 
Now, it is obvious that Polycarp knew the belief of the 
Church over which he had episcopal supervision. Nor 
will it be questioned that these two Bishops of the Church 
each knew what the other believed and the particulars of 
the faith of their respective Churches, as well as the other 
Churches in Asia. 

Yet these authentic Epistles of Ignatius make it clear 
that the virgin birth was well known in the Churches at 
Smyrna, Ephesus, Troas, Tralles, Antioch and other cen- 
ters some years before the date set for its origin among an 
exiled group of Jewish-Christians in Bactanea, at the close 
of the first century or the beginning of the second. This 
fact compels us to repeat the question, Whence, then, did 
these Churches acquire this belief? Our answer is, the 
Antioch Christians received it from members of the Church 
at Jerusalem, where Mary the mother of Jesus lived and 
where the “‘brethren of the Lord’’ and the apostles lived 
and labored long before any written Gospel existed in 
which interpolations could be inserted. From Jerusalem 
the belief spread to Samaria, to Antioch and to other Gen- 
tile Churches. Later on, it helped to create a line of cleav- 
age in the primitive Church in Jerusalem. This division 
finally culminated during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, 
on the one hand, in Ebionism, and, on the other, in a 
union of the Jewish-Christians (who accepted the virgin 
birth) with the Gentile-Christians in one Church in Jeru- 
salem. Marcus was the first Bishop of the united Church. 

Such, then, are the principal objections raised against 
the position here presented that belief in the virgin birth 
~ TEBusebius, History, IV, 14. 


100 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


originated in the primitive Church, and the answers to the 
same. 

The foregoing discussion seems to furnish solid ground 
for the judgment that this so-called proof that the virgin 
birth was not an article of the faith of the primitive Chris- 
tian Church at Jerusalem and elsewhere from the silence 
of St. Paul and other New Testament writers concerning 
it is in need of much stronger arguments than those relied 
upon, for it is undeniable that the more closely the par- 


ticulars of this proof are examined the less impressive they 
become, 


CHAPTER V 
PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 


Now that the objections have been answered that would 
prevent us from asserting that knowledge of the virgin 
birth was public property in the primitive Church, and, 
also, as it has been clearly shown by several lines of inquiry 
that it was an article of its faith, we shall take up the 
second question which has indeed been the underlying 
motive of the investigation conducted thus far. 

II. Did Paul know the belief of the Church in*Jeru- 
salem? 

Several facts at once present themselves for consideration. 

(1) That news of the preaching to which the apostles 
set themselves soon after the crucifixion was soon known 
throughout Jerusalem, that it occasioned widespread ex- 
citement and that the majority of the population would 
probably have been converted, following the example of 
hundreds of the priests of the temple, had not the authori- 
ties employed the most repressive measures against it, is 
the impression that the early chapters of the Book of the 
Actst undoubtedly convey. Paul, then known as Saul, 
was in Jerusalem. He was well known to the authorities 
and was an acknowledged leader in the persecution of the 
Church.2. He was present at the mock trial of Stephen.° 
He heard Stephen’s defense of his faith, and therefore he 
must have been familiar during all the period that followed 
with the chief tenets of the new faith. After his conver- 


1 j.-viii. 

2 Ibid., vii. 54; viii. 1-3. 

3Some scholars endeavor to prove that Paul did not participate in the persecution 
against Stephen. See Havet, Le Christianisme et ses Origines, Vol. IV, p. 91. On the 
other side see Brandt, Die Evanghelische Geschicte und der Ursprung des Christentums, 


p. 516, 
101 


102 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


sion Paul returned to Jerusalem and ‘‘assayed to join 
himself to the disciples, but they were afraid of him and 
believed not that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took 
him and brought him to the apostles and declared how 
he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken 
to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in 
the name of Jesus; and he was with them coming in and 
going out of Jerusalem.’’* Here is our first piece of direct 
evidence that Paul was acquainted with the beliefs of the 
Church at Jerusalem. 

(2) A year or so after the Church had been organized 
at Antioch,® Paul again came to Jerusalem with Barnabas, 
bringing contributions to the Church there.* During this 
stay of Paul in the city, Peter was thrown into prison, 
preliminary to his execution when the Passover was ended. 
It is interesting to speculate on the whereabouts of Paul 
on the night that Peter was rescued from prison. Mary, 
the mother of John Mark, who was the companion of 
Paul, had, as we know from Acts xii. 12, a home in Jeru- 
salem. That home, it is evident, was the meeting-place of 
the disciples and the headquarters, probably, of the apostles 
and of the Church. John also had a home in the city, as 
well as Paul’s sister.? Peter seems to have known very 
well where to seek the brethren when in the dead of the 
night he finds himself unexpectedly released from prison. 
“And when he had considered the thing he came to the 
house of Mary, the mother of John whose surname was 
Mark, where many were gathered together praying.’’® 

Who could the “‘many’’ have been but members of the 
Jerusalem Church, that is, the disciples? Now, it is not 
improbable that Paul and Barnabas would be spending 


“Acts ix. 26-28. 

S Tbid., “x. 119, 

®See Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. III, p. 458. 
T Acts xiii, 16. 

8 Ibid., xii, 12. 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 103 


most of their time in the company of the Church to which 
they had recently come with financial assistance, and that 
they were among the “‘many’”’ present that night at Mary’s 
home. Paul may have been at his sister's home that par- 
ticular evening, but it seems more probable that he was 
also with the ‘‘many’’ at Mary’s house, for we read at the 
close of the chapter that “‘Barnabas and Saul returned from 
Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry and took 
with them John, whose surname was Mark.’’ Apparently 
they left Jerusalem suddenly, to escape the vengeance which 
Herod might exact for the escape of Peter, and took with 
them Mark the son of Mary at whose house they had 
stayed. 

(3) In chapter xv. Paul is again back in Jerusalem. 
There had been great debates disturbing the Church at 
Antioch, occasioned by certain Jewish Christians from 
Judea who taught Gentile converts the necessity of circum- 
cision according to the Law of Moses, along with the 
belief in Jesus as the Messiah. But Paul had preached that 
both the Law and the Prophets, the whole revelation of 
God, indeed, was summed up in Jesus. Jesus, not Moses 
nor the Law nor the Prophets, was the Savior of men. 
There arose, as might be expected, no small dissension and 
disputation in the Church, which was allayed finally by 
sending a deputation to the Mother Church at Jerusalem 
to ask it to act as arbitrator of these differences. 

The deputation appointed, consisting of Paul and 
Barnabas and certain other members of the Church, went 
up to Jerusalem. An assembly of the whole Church, 
including the apostles and elders, was called to consider 
and act on what was really the greatest and farthest- 
reaching issue that the Church had yet encountered: 
whether the Christian faith should be content to remain a 
Jewish sect or set out to become a universal religion. The 
apostles were present in a body. ‘These men certainly 


104 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


knew all there was to be known of the Church they had 
founded. They must have possessed a version of their 
own of the facts connected with the birth of Jesus. His 
mother was a member of that Church. James, the Presi- 
dent of the Council, a “brother of the Lord,’’ and Jude, 
also a “‘brother,’’ must have had some testimony to give 
concerning them. John, in whose home Mary lived with 
his mother Salome, also would have some contribution to 
make, and doubtless some among the holy women who 
were friends of Mary had some understanding of her 
secret. It is not possible to believe that all these apostles 
and elders who had such an interest in, and means of access 
to, an intimate knowledge of everything that had to do 
with our Lord’s life from the beginning had never heard 
of any remarkable circumstances connected with his birth. 

Cogent proof that they did know of them lies in the 
fact that, in the Gospel of Luke which contains the narra- 
tive of his birth from a virgin and which was written 
before the Book of Acts, Luke declares his intention ‘‘to 
set forth in order those things which are surely believed 
among us even as they delivered them to us which from 
the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the 
word.” He tells Theophilus that he had taken pains to 
arrive at a perfect understanding (had accurately traced 
out step by step) all things from the very beginning, in 
order that “thou mightest know the certainty of those 
things wherein thou ‘hast been instructed.’”” When and 
where had the process gone on of establishing ‘‘those things 
surely believed among us’? At once this question carries 
us back to the earliest beginnings of the Church, and 
“those who delivered them to us’’ were certainly the very 
ones who were then present at this Council. 

Now, it is quite true that the all-engrossing, the most 
momentous question before the Council was, Christ or 
Moses, Law or Grace. ‘This controversy which had agi- 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 105 


tated the Church from its earliest days was destined a 
few years later to divide the Church forever, on its return 
from Pella to Jerusalem. But are we to assume that Paul 
in all his conversations with the apostles and elders and 
members of the Church at these meetings never learned 
anything about the birth, birthplace, childhood, youth, 
sayings or deeds of Jesus? Did he never discuss any sub- 
ject with them other than circumcision and the Law? 

(4) Paul visited Jerusalem for the last time® about 56 
A.D. “And when we were come to Jerusalem the 
breathren received us gladly. And the day following Paul 
went in with us unto James, and all the elders were pres- 
ent.’’ Here, again, the same old ever-recurring difference 
between Paul and the Judaizing element in the Church 
presented itself and doubtless was the main question under 
discussion. But must we assume here also that other mat- 
ters of faith and Christian history were never mentioned 
to Paul by those apostles who had talked with the Lord 
and also knew Mary, the mother of Jesus? 

Some scholars insist, it is quite true, that Paul knew 
little or nothing of our Lord’s earthly life,1° and in proof 
cite the fact that in his Epistles Paul makes few references 
to any saying or event in the life of Jesus. Such a con- 
tention, however, in the light of the above facts, cannot 
be allowed any serious weight. Paul was not following 
a dream. He was not always absorbed in theology, nor 
was his thought-life filled with metaphysical abstractions. 
Paul knew vastly more than his Epistles indicate, every- 


© Ibid., xxi. 

7°Renan, Les Apostes, p. 14; Saint Paul, p. 563; Julicher, Einleitung, p. 24. 
But Kein, in History of Jesus of Nazareth, Eng. Trans., affirms the opposite, as do 
Holtzman, Leben Jesu, pp. 6-9, and Lloyd, The Historic Christ in the Letters of St. 
Paul, Biblica Sacra. 

Feinne, however, decides in the negative! ‘Dass der Apostal der irdischen Jesus 
gekannt und durch, ihn schon einen Eindruck erhalten habe, muss als unwahrscheinlich 
gelten, da er sich nie, auch llkor. 5, 16 nicht, daruf beruft, in Gegenteil, fast 
geflissentlich I Kor. i. 9; Gal. i, 12-16, augh I Kor. xv. 8, sein Christusbild und sein 
Apostalat auf die Wirkung des auferstandenen und erhohten Christus zuruckfuhrt”’ 
(Jesus Christus und Paulus, p. 93). 


106 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


thing, indeed, about the historical Jesus that was common 
property. It must not be forgotten that Luke was Paul’s 
traveling companion and that Luke always had with him, 
and was adding to, the documents which furnished the 
material for his Gospel. The apostle himself tells us that 
three years after his conversation he went up to Jerusalem 
to visit (in the Greek, to interrogate about facts, to ques- 
tion) Peter and abode with him fifteen days. It is not 
too much to suppose that during this time Paul learned 
much from the chief of the apostles concerning the life 
of the Lord Jesus. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians 
he writes, ‘I delivered unto you that which I received,” 
and immediately proceeds to give the most complete list of 
the reappearances of the risen Lord in Scripture. Where 
else did he get this information? 

Paul was a student in residence in Jerusalem. He took 
the lead in the persecution of the Christian community 
there. He returned to the Jerusalem Church several times 
on important missions in company with those of high 
repute belonging to it, visiting apostles and Elders, and 
also Peter, and preaching in its synagogues. Is the asser- 
tion credible that the apostle of Jesus Christ, who had 
seen the heavenly Jesus on the Damascus road, never once 
improved these opportunities to inquire about the earthly 
life of that same Jesus? Would he not learn all the facts 
in the life of the Lord which everyone else knew, and 
others, perhaps, which were not so well known by the 
majority of the Church? We must agree with Weizsacker 
that Paul undoubtedly had acquired a knowledge of the 
evangelical tradition of Jesus. 

The right has now been earned to say that knowledge 

11 Panl thes know that our Lord had brothers, I Cor. ix. 5; Gal. i. 19; ii. 9-12. 
He knows that He was born under the Mosaic Law, Gal. iv. 4; that his earthly 
ministry was limited to the House of Israel, Rom. xv. 8; that He was obedient even 
unto death on the cross, Phil. ii. 8; that He had chosen apostles, Gal. i. 17-19; I Cor. 


ix. 5, 15, 19. Paul’s knowledge of our Lord’s earthly life seems to have been very 
full and comprehensive. But see Feinne, Jesus Christus und Paulus, 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 107 


of the birth of Jesus from a virgin was public property 
at that time in the Jerusalem Church. It is unreasonable 
to suppose that Paul, the great preacher and interpreter of 
the Spiritual Christ, did not know all that was known to 
John, in whose home Mary the mother of Jesus lived, 
or to all the other apostles, about the biography of Jesus. 
Sufficient data has now been produced to warrant this con- 
clusion, also, that whatever was known in the primitive 
Church at Jerusalem concerning the birth and life of Jesus 
was also familiar to Paul. 

But if further evidence were to be demanded, we need 
only to call upon the companions of St. Paul—Barnabas, 
Luke, John Mark, Sylvanus or Silas—who were all well 
acquainted with the Church in Jerusalem. Barnabas was 
one of its foremost leaders, next in importance to the apos- 
tles. Mark, at whose mother’s house the apostles and the 
Church often met, would surely be a competent witness 
concerning what was believed by all who assembled there. 
Although Luke was a member of the Church at Antioch, 
he, too, knew everybody of note in the Jerusalem Church. 
It appeals to reason that anything which Paul did not 
otherwise learn, those companions of his knew and would 
inform him. But let the following particulars in support 
of this conclusion be carefully considered. 

From the Epistle to the Colossians iv. 10-14, and also 
from the Epistle to Philemon, we learn that Mark and 
Luke were together with Paul in Rome. He is a prisoner, 
they are ministering to him in his bonds. Think of all 
that would come out in long conversations held by these 
three together, Paul, Mark and Luke! According to the 
best authorities this was either in the year 62 or a little 
later. Now, it is difficult to believe that these conversa- 
tions between these three great personalities never dwelt 
upon Christ Jesus and the facts of his life—his parentage, 
birth and ministry. Mark and Luke had already written 


108 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


their Gospels. Mark wrote his first and then Luke had 
made use of it. “‘There is no doubt,” says Harnack, “‘that 
St. Mark’s Gospel belongs to the sources of the Gospel of 
Luke. . . . If two years after the arrival of St. Paul in 
Rome the Acts was already written, then, the date of the 
Lukan Gospel must be earlier, and that of the Gospel of 
Mack earlier still.12, Nearly all New Testament scholars 
of recent times agree that the Gospel of Mark was one 
of the sources of the Gospel of Luke. 

Here, then, these two evangelists have Paul’s company 
all to themselves. As between an author and his book, 
who would hesitate in making his choice of the better 
source of information? What world of misunderstanding 
would be removed if there were only some way that these 
three could check up for us the chronological data, etc., in 
which rationalizing critics of recent times have indulged in 
their commentaries on the Gospels of Mark and Luke! 

But we may be certain that Luke inquired and Mark 
explained why he had omitted all mention of the birth 
of Jesus from a virgin from his Gospel. Mark, it is abso- 
lutely certain, did not do so from lack of information, 
since he had lived and mingled in the identical circle in the 
Jerusalem Church where Luke obtained his data. But the 
point to be distinctly noted is that Paul would improve 
this golden opportunity to learn from these two evan- 
gelists and satisfy his mind in regard to any points on 
which he felt the need of more light. Moreover, Paul 
was probably already acquainted with Luke’s Gospel, for 
Luke did not collect his materials in Rome, nor write his 
Gospel there, but did it probably in time spent with Paul 
occasionally for two years at Caesarea. 

Of course, all this use of Scripture and method of infer- 
ence may sound unconvincing to those to whom it is 
strange and novel to have such reproductions of scenes 


2 Date of the Acts, etc... p. 125. 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 109 


from those early days set before them. But that will pass 
away once they begin to form this habit of collecting 
scattered facts of the New Testament and relating them 
in time and place to each other. Cumulative bits of evi- 
dence are stubborn things. They can not safely be brushed 
aside. 

It will not, therefore, help matters for a narrow critic, 
deficient in historical imagination, to refuse to examine any 
and all conclusions based upon what in the very nature of 
things must have occurred at this meeting of Paul and 
Luke and Mark in Rome. Unless these three ministers of 
the crucified Jesus had for some unknown reason become 
absolutely indifferent to the very cause which had brought 
them to Rome, no matter what other subjects might be 
taken up, the bulk of their conversation would be about 
the history, the present conditions and future prospects 
of Christianity. 

Harnack is no dreamer. This eminent scholar says: 


It is impossible that St. Mark brought his Gospel 
to Rome when he came thither to St. Paul in prison; 
he may while in Rome have subjected it to further 
revision and some considerable time later may have 
published it at the prayer of the Roman Christians. 
. . . If we compare this conclusion from the evi- 
dence of tradition with the date presupposed by the 
chronology of the Lukan writings, we find that they 
are contradictory. Tradition asserts no veto against 
the hypothesis that St. Luke, when he met St. Mark 
in the company of St. Paul the prisoner, was per- 
mitted by him to peruse a written record of the 
Gospel history which was essentially identical with 
the Gospel of St. Mark given to the Church at a 
later date.7® 


38 [bid., pp. 132, 133. 


110 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


Zahn" also states: ‘“‘Since Luke was familiar with 
a number of attempts to write the history of Christi- 
anity, and since his characterization of these efforts 
perfectly suits Mark’s Gospel . . . it is natural to 
suppose that he used this writing. He was acquainted 
with Mark and knew his relation to Peter who was 
a prominent eye-witness of the Gospel events. He 
was in Rome in company with Mark about the year 
62 (Col. iv. 14) and possibly again in 66 (II Tim. 
iv. 11), consequently at the time Mark wrote his 
Gospel.” 


What other conclusion, then, can be drawn from this 
testimony of experts with all the previous labors of critical 
scholarship before them than that, whatever was known 
to the writers of the Gospel concerning the birth of our 
Lord, Paul the apostle knew. Of them it can be said that 
they did know that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that 
they recorded the facts connected therewith; they did know 
that this fact was included by the Church among the facts 
“believed among us,’ as Luke states it. Whatever may 
have been the reasons for his silence concerning it, Paul, 
therefore, also knew this to be the case. 

In this connection perhaps it may not be amiss to 
remember that while the Scriptures were read in Hebrew 
in the synagogues of Palestine, the Greek Version (the 
Septuagint Ixx) was the Bible of the primitive Church, 
and also of the Jews scattered throughout the empire. 
With this Greek Bible in their hands both Jews and Greeks 
likewise could test the references of the apostles in their 
preaching concerning Christ as the Messiah of prophecy 
and note the agreement between Prophecy and its fulfill- 
ment, as did the Bereans,*® who scrutinized “the Scriptures 


14 Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. III, pp. 101, 102. 
2 Acts xvii, 11. 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH lll 


daily to see whether these things were so.” “This Ver- 
sion,”’ says Dalman,?* ‘‘was the most important book read 
by the Christians in public and in private.” It was the 
only Bible the Gentile or Greek-speaking Christians had, 
or understood. It was the only Scripture read and taught 
in the Churches, 

This was Paul’s Bible. In his writings, as also in his 
preaching, he employed the Greek Scriptures, which he 
quotes in his Epistles no less than 136 times. But in this 
Version the prophecy of Isaiah?” concerning the wonderful 
child who should be called Immanuel, and which reads, 
“Behold a young woman [almah, a young woman of 
marriageable age] shall conceive and bear a son, and shall 
call his name Immanuel,” is translated, “Behold a virgin 
[parthenos] shall conceive and bear a son, and thou shalt 
call his name Emmanuel.” 

The apostle, who was certainly as well versed in Hebrew 
as he was in Greek, must have been satisfied that the trans- 
lators of the Septuagint, which was in use some two 
hundred and fifty years before Christ, had made no mis- 
take when they rendered the word almah, “‘a young 
woman,’ by the Greek term, parthenos, “‘a virgin,” in- 
stead of by neanis, which also signifies ‘‘a young woman.” 
With the same Greek Scriptures before them, the distinctive 
use of parthenos, rather than neanis, would not escape the 
notice of Christians including his own converts in all the 
Churches. This rendering of the Hebrew almah by 
patthenos instead of neanis, which is more poetical, was 
adopted by the Jewish translators (250 B.c.) and was 
accepted by the Jews throughout the Dispersion. 

It is generally understood that Isaiah vii. 14 was not 
interpreted by teachers of Israel in Christ’s time as Mes- 
sianic, but those who had listened to the preaching of the 


1° Words of Jesus, p. 18, 
47Is, vii, 14, 


112 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


apostles and the thousands who had accepted Jesus as the 
Messiah were sure this was an error. Matthew i. 22 gives 
us an insight into the interpretation adopted by the Chris- 
tians which was directly opposed to the interpretation of 
the Scribes: ‘“‘Now all this was done that it might be ful- 
filled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, 
saying, ‘Behold a virgin shall be with child and shall bring 
forth a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel.’ ” 
The preachers of the Gospel rejected the teaching of the 
Rabbis wherever it conflicted with their own interpretation 
of the Scripture in the light of the facts in the life of 
Christ. 

The resurrection formed the dividing line between the 
Jewish interpretation of Scripture and the Christian. Jesus 
himself had set the example of independence by his non- 
conformity with tradition and by his many corrections of 
rabbinic error in Scriptural interpretation. Ignoring the 
endless discussions of the schools concerning the Messiah, 
and of those leaders who saw everything in the Scriptures 
but the Day of God, “Christ Jesus,’ writes Luke in his 
Gospel (xxiv. 27), ‘‘beginning at Moses and the Prophets 
expounded unto them (Cleopas and his companion) in 
all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”’ 

Peter on the Day of Pentecost, and again on the occasion 
of the healing at the Gate Beautiful, openly declared that 
the teaching of the schools, with which the common 
understanding of the people concerning the Messiah coin- 
cided, was entirely erroneous, because the schools had 
misinterpreted the references and so had failed to under- 
stand the true character of the Messiah.*® 

Likewise, Philip the evangelist interpreted the Prophecy 
of Isaiah for the Eunuch in a way quite opposed to the 
non-Messianic understanding of it by the Rabbis, for he 


38 Acts iii, 14-17. 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH LS 


applied the Prophecy to Jesus.19 The dividing line be- 
tween the old and the new form of interpretation for St. 
Paul was his experience on the Damascus road. That 
vision of the risen Christ compelled changes in his interpre- 
tation of Prophecy to bring it into harmony with its 
newly discovered fulfillment in Jesus, ‘‘and straightway 
he preached Christ in the Synagogues, that He is the Son 
of God.” His defense before Agrippa®® confirms the fact 
that he had abandoned the rabbinic interpretation con- 
cerning the Messiah and now interpreted the Scriptures in 
the light of his vision of the risen Lord. 

Paul’s conviction that the teachers of Israel had gone 
astray in their interpretation and understanding of Scrip- 
ture is thus set forth in his Second Epistle to the Corin- 
thians:* ‘But their minds were blinded for until this day 
remained the same vail untaken away in the reading of the 
Old Testament, which vail is done away in Christ. But 
even unto this day when Moses is read the vail is upon 
their heart.” 

The upshot of the whole matter with reference to Christ 
is that the Jews interpreted and applied prophecy in one 
way, the Christians in another. The Christians inter- 
preted the verse in regard to the virgin in Isaiah as Mes- 
sianic in significance and saw its fulfillment in the birth 
of Jesus, as did the evangelist Matthew in his Gospel. 
Paul also must have known that according to Scripture 
the Messiah must be born of a virgin and that his birth- 
place, according to Micah v. 2, 3, must be Bethlehem. The 
one prophecy was as clear as the other. 

To affirm, then, that Paul knew not that birth from a 
virgin was prophesied of the Messiah is equivalent to say- 
ing that he had not read Isaiah or that he had not applied 
the Prophecy therein the same as had the Christians, and 


- 9 Tbid., viii. 26-35. 
20 Tbid., xxvi. 20-23. 
1 iii, 14, 15. 


114 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


as Matthew in his Gospel had interpreted it, or that he 
did not know the true origin of Jesus whom he had 
preached as Messiah, ‘‘the Son of God.’ If Isaiah did 
prophesy of a virgin birth as his origin and Jesus was 
not born of a virgin according to the facts of history, then 
what becomes of the claim that Jesus was the Messiah? 
This would put us in the same kind of difficulty as would 
a statement that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem as 
required by the Prophecy of Micah: “But thou Bethlehem 
Ephrata, though thou be little among the thousands of 
Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that 
is to rule in Israel: whose goings forth have been from of 
old, from everlasting.’’ Furthermore, if we may be par- 
doned for departing for the moment from our purpose 
to treat the subject historically should we attempt to 
discuss it doctrinally, it would be very difficult, on the 
assumption that Paul knew nothing of a supernatural 
birth, to reconcile his doctrines concerning human sin with 
the sinlessness of Jesus left out.22 

It is not necessary, however, to enter here upon the 
theories of the theologians in regard to the origin of sin 
or of inherited depravity, which are for the modern mind 
dead issues, as once stated in Church formulas. It is 
enough to say that while psychology repudiates these older 
theories of total depravity by inheritance, it does admit 
the undeniable presence of depraved tendencies in human 
nature, which is in agreement with the Pauline doctrine, 
rightly interpreted. Students of ethnology testify to the 
transmission of physical, mental and moral characteristics 
of families, nations and races from generation to genera- 
tion, just as the apostle, when he surveys the whole history 
of the human race, ignores all racial distinctions between 
Jew and Gentile and traces the universal corruption back 
to its fountainhead in the first man Adam, with whom 

211 Cor. v. 21. 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 115 


began this process of transmitting depraved tendencies to 
posterity. 

If Jesus was human like the rest of us, it is a postulate 
of reason that He must of necessity have inherited this 
sinwardness, this inbred bias or tendency toward sin which 
inheres, according to St. Paul, also, in human nature and 
is derived in its beginnings from Adam. If Jesus inherited 
this propensity to evil through a human father and mother, 
that would raise the question, how could He be the essen- 
tially Holy, the Sinless One, capable of redeeming human- 
ity from the depraved tendencies which were inbred in his 
own nature? Was there any way that He could avoid 
this inheritance? How? This is the vital question. 
Holding that He was human like the rest of us definitely 
puts the stamp of inconsistency on the apostle’s argument 
asserting the universality of sin and at the same time the 
sinless character of the human Jesus. For, if knowledge 
of the virgin birth did not lie in the background of his 
thinking, nor any assumption that this mode of Christ’s 
entrance into the world was also known to the Christians 
to whom he was writing so that they would readily agree 
with him in exempting Jesus from inherited sin, it is 
incomprehensible that a man of Paul’s intellectual power 
and controversial ability should have overlooked this wide 
gap in his reasoning. 

Undeniably, on the above supposition, this incon- 
sistency is there. Modern science sees no way by which 
a human being who enters this world like the rest of us 
can do so without inheriting the tendencies or qualities 
belonging to fallen human nature, nor does Paul, as is 
evidenced by his assertion of the universal inbred moral 
corruption of humanity, but he offers no explanation of 
Christ’s exemption. 

It is quite interesting to review the laborious attempts 
often made by various authors who wrestle with this 


116 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


Pauline problem. Some boldly deny the sinlessness of 
Jesus, Others deny his birth from a virgin, but endeavor 
to account for his sinless character by attributing to Him 
an extraordinary endowment of spiritual energy, by means 
of the Holy Spirit, which freed Him from thralldom to 
any sinful impulse in his human nature. But how futile 
are all such efforts to rule out the miraculous and to prove 
that Paul had no knowledge of the birth from a virgin 
is almost self-evident. If we deny, on the one hand, that 
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, as stated by Mat- 
thew and Luke, but claim, on the other, that while He 
was born like the rest of us the Holy Spirit excluded all 
outbreaks of sinwardness in his nature from the beginning 
of his being, such suicidal reasoning does not even accom- 
plish its aim of ruling out the miraculous. It only substi- 
tutes a contradiction for it, by which heredity through 
the human parent is acknowledged but at the same time 
that same heredity is checkmated by the Holy Spirit! 

If the argument be urged that according to the apostle’s 
statement Christ did not come in the sameness, but in the 
“likeness of sinful flesh,’ thereby in the thought of the 
apostle implying a difference between Christ’s nature and 
the nature of other men, this would only put the difficulty 
off without solving it, for the question would still remain, 
How did Jesus obtain the ‘‘likeness’® and yet avoid this 
sameness? It is certain He did not obtain the ‘‘likeness”’ 
from his parents, Joseph and Mary, for they had the same 
fallen nature as others of Adam’s race and could not trans- 
mit what they did not possess. Nor is it conceivable that 
the other children of Joseph and Mary also escaped the 
impress of the laws of heredity. A study of the progeni- 
tors in the genealogy of Jesus precludes any way out of 
this predicament through the laws of atavism. 

The renowned Beyschlag, Professor of Theology at 
Halle, says: ‘There was a quality inherent in the pneuma 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH btw) 


[Spirit] of Jesus which established his individuality; a 
holy energy that excluded from the first that sinful pre- 
dominance of the sar [flesh] which is in all other men the 
basis of sinfulness.”* Naturally, however, the question 
again arises, if the earthly parents themselves of Jesus 
inherit this basis, when and whence did Jesus derive the 
“holy energy’ which excluded or expelled this “‘basis of 
sinfulness’’ from his nature? 

Bernhard Weiss, Professor of Theology in Berlin, sur- 
renders to the difficulty: ‘““Whether Paul has considered 
how this sinfulness of Christ during his earthly life is 
compatible with his doctrine of the power of sin having, 
through Adam’s transgression, obtained dominion in the 
whole human race, cannot be ascertained.’”” As an expla- 
nation this does not help us out much, for whether Paul 
considered that problem or not, he was well aware that 
Jesus had a mother of the seed of David, and the difficulty 
of reconciling the two definitely opposing statements of 
the apostle under discussion is still there. The fact that 
Paul himself makes no attempt to dispose of the incon- 
sistency, and acts as if none existed, would only add to 
the dilemma. 

Stevens, of Yale University, who is of the opinion that 
Paul was not acquainted with the tradition of the super- 
natural birth, says: 


When we consider his doctrine of the universal 
sinfulness of mankind as descended from Adam with 
his affirmation of the sinfulness of Jesus, the preter- 
natural origin of his humanity seems to supply the 
only means of explaining and harmonizing these two 
facts, both of which he so explicitly asserts; we can 
only say, that although there is no evidence that Paul 
reflected upon the problem it is certain that he not 


33 New Testament Theology, Vol. II, p. 69. 


118 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


only affirms nothing which is inconsistent with the 
supernatural conception, but that on no other sup- 
position can his statements of Christ’s sinlessness, on 
the one hand, and universal sinfulness, on the other, 
be so well explained and harmonized.”’*° 


This is very nearly equivalent to an admission that the 
apostle did have knowledge of the belief in the Jerusalem 
Church that Jesus was born of a virgin. For if Paul had 
not reflected upon the problem or had not found in the 
supernatural character of Jesus’ birth the key to its solu- 
tion, he would have bequeathed to posterity a conundrum 
which demanded an answer but to which no answer could 
be given. 

And is it not rather singular that if the birth of Jesus 
from a virgin never occurred, or if Paul had no knowledge 
of it either as a common rumor, a theory or a myth, that 
two diametrically opposed principles of such tremendous 
import to history and religion should find their explana- 
tion and reconciliation only in the supernatural character 
of an event which it is said never occurred? 

While it would be presumptuous to attempt to declare 
the whole mind of the apostle, it is absolutely certain 
(1) that he knew Christ was born of a woman, and 
(2) that He was without sin. If Paul did not pause to 
fill up all the gaps in his argument or to explain how this 
latter could be so without overthrowing his other doctrine 
of the inbred depraved tendencies of the race, the explana- 
tion probably is that the emphasis of his thought was 
upon the existence of the contrast between the earthly 
Adam and the heavenly Jesus, the one the cause of sin, the 
other the Redeemer from sin. Those to whom the apostle 
wrote were already Christians and therefore so well in- 
structed in the “how”’ of the sinlessness of Jesus that they 


34 Biblical Theology of the New Testament, Vol. II, p. 405. 
25 The Pauline Theology, p. 212. 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 119 


were able also to understand the theological reasoning of 
the apostle in regard to the “‘why”’ of it, which seems not 
altogether to be the case with some Bible readers of the 
present day. ‘They had access to the same Greek Bible 
prophesying the Christ as Paul, and they were in posses- 
sion of the oral teachings of the disciples who had migrated 
everywhere from the primitive community in Jerusalem. 

This also may be said that, whatever the form of com- 
patibility between them in the mind of the apostle, the 
incompatibility pointed out in his conflicting statements 
of universal sin and the sinlessness of Jesus still exists. 
Those who dispute his birth from a virgin have no alter- 
native in settling that conflict but to adopt the teaching 
of those who deny the sinless character of Christ and affirm 
his personal share in the evil inheritance of humanity. 

That there is a solution of the problem not based upon 
a choice between the two, and that this solution rests upon 
sound inferences from what is involved in the birth of 
Jesus from a virgin and nowhere else, seems to be a neces- 
sary conclusion from the data given in the narrative of 
Luke, in which the causal agent of Christ’s human nature 
is affirmed to be the creative Spirit of God to the exclusion 
of all other agencies. 


He shall be called great and shall be called the Son 
of God: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the 
throne of his father David. . . . Then said Mary 
unto the angel, How shall this be seeing I know not 
aman? And the angel answered and said unto her, 
The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power 
of the Highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also 
that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be 
called the Son of God.?¢ 


Luke i. 31-35, 


120 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


No companion to this path of entrance into human 
life is suggested in any divinely announced nativity in the 
Old Testament. Of the birth of John the Baptist, for 
instance, it is simply stated that “‘he shall be filled with 
the Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb,” which 
differs in meaning from the birth ascribed to Jesus, as the 
act instituting natural law is distinct from cases of the 
operation of natural law in the ordinary course of nature. 
This child to be who shall be “‘holy’”’ from the beginning 
is the direct handiwork and not the product at one remove 
of the Holy Spirit, and entitled, therefore, in a special 
manner to be called the Son of God. His human nature 
is to include all the capabilities belonging to the perfectly 
human. But sin, according to Scripture, is no essential 
characteristic or native element in human nature. It is an 
acquired characteristic of human nature. Sin is an invasion 
acquiesced in by a free act of will. It is a foreign element 
that has crept in, and not an original constituent of human 
nature. It is not a necessary ingredient of manhood. The 
less power sin has over anyone, not the less, but the more, 
human does he become in terms of the primal constitution 
of man as God created him. 

In assuming human nature, therefore, the human nature 
which the Son of God took upon himself was not a 
morally tainted and enfeebled nature, but a human nature 
undefiled and in possession of all the faculties and capa- 
bilities belonging to its genus before it was outraged by 
the corrupting effect of evil. Heredity had not put its 
finger upon it. Every entail of sin was annulled by the 
power of God, and a morally perfect human being entered 
into the historic life of humanity, passed through all the 
experiences of the race, “‘was in all points tempted as we 
are,” and ended as He began, without sin. Where Adam 
fell, Jesus stood. His nature was fully human, i. e., not 
gifted with an incapacity for sin, but it proved equal to 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH wal 


the resistance required not to sin. Alongside its vulnera- 
bility to temptation was also a sin-proof veto power over 
it. As a perfectly healthy athlete might go down among 
a plague-stricken, weak and crippled. mass of humanity 
without fear of contagion and radiating healthfulness by 
reason of his abundant life, so Christ Jesus entered out 
common life as the Sinless One, the Healer, the Redeemer, 
the Miracle of History—for a sinless individual joining 
a sinful race is as great a miracle as a resurrection from 
the dead. 

We may now properly turn to inquire, Did the apostle 
John know of the birth of Jesus from a virgin? It would 
be hard to understand, indeed, how it could be that he 
did not. His mother was kinswoman of Mary, the mother 
of Jesus. When Jesus was dying He committed his mother 
to the loving care of John, ‘‘And from that hour that 
disciple took her to his own home.’’??. Mary had lived in 
the home of her sister, Salome,28 John’s mother, and it 
may be taken for granted that John learned all that there 
was to know from his mother. 

It is not necessary to set store by the doubtful argument 
of some critics in regard to the correct form of the text of 
John i. 13. For the text, ‘‘which were born,” they”? 
would substitute “who was born,” and apply the passage 
to Jesus. Probably much may be said in favor of this 
suggested correction. But leaving these questions of textual 
criticism aside, we are on firm ground in asserting that 
John also knew what the Church in Jerusalem knew. We 
may say with Zahn: ‘‘As is proved by the prologue of 
John and the birth stories of Matthew and Luke, at the 
time®® when all the Gospels were written it was commonly 


77 John ix. 27, John must have moved from Capernaum to Jerusalem for, according 
to Acts, we find him there in all the early days of the Church. 

8 See Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. III, p. 187, and note 20. 

7° Notably Professor Blass, Philosophy of the Gospel. 

%9It is only fair to note that Zahn fixes a later date for these Gospels than does 
Harnack. 


122 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


believed by the Church that Jesus was not the son of 
Joseph; but neither John nor the Synoptics make this a 
part of the teaching of Jesus.’’*4 

Taking our stand again on undebatable ground, we 
maintain that John had Luke’s Gospel before him when 
he wrote his own. ‘‘John corrects Luke,’’ says Dr. Mof- 
fatt. “Both have remarkable common elements in their 
vocabulary. . . . In one class of passages some special 
trait of Luke has been adopted and adapted by the fourth 
evangelist.’’*? 

Numerous illustrations in the text of both Gospels are 
given in support of these statements. It is quite true that 
Dr. Moffatt is not convinced that John the apostle was 
the author of the Fourth Gospel. If John was not its 
author, it might be inferred that no conclusion can be 
drawn from anything in the Fourth Gospel that he per- 
sonally knew anything about a belief in the Church con- 
cerning the virgin birth. This argument, however, cuts 
both ways, for if John was not the author of the Fourth 
Gospel, then no conclusion can be drawn against belief in 
the virgin birth from its silence concerning it. The con- 
sensus of critical opinion, however, is that John the 
Apostle, and not John the Presbyter (if such a person 
ever really lived) did write the Fourth Gospel. The right 
conclusion to draw here also, therefore, must be that, since 
John had the Synoptic Gospels before him when he wrote 
his own, he must have known of the birth of Jesus from 
a virgin, because the Gospels of Matthew and Luke both 
contain accounts of it. There can be no doubt that he 
knew the contents of the Gospels he was using in writing 
his own. 

The two prior fundamental questions which go to the 


1 Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. III, Di ad. 
#8 Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, D1 5S5, 


PAUL AND THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH 123 


roots of the problem of the silence of Paul concerning the 
birth of Jesus from a virgin: What was the belief of the 
primitive Church in Jerusalem? and Did Paul know of 
this belief? have now been, we think, answered. And the 
conclusion we have reached is that Paul did have full 
knowledge of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, whatever 
the reasons may have been for his silence concerning it. 


CHAPTER VI 
FINAL EVIDENCE 


In the foregoing pages evidence and inference have been 
employed to show that the narratives of the birth of our 
Lord from a virgin originated in Jewish-Christian circles; 
that opportunity was not lacking to share in the knowl- 
edge of Mary, the mother of Jesus; that this chapter of 
his biography could not have been a myth invented by 
Gentile-Christians, since the sources of the narrative in 
Luke’s Gospel are earlier in date than the preaching of the 
Gospel among the Gentiles; that it could not have been the 
result of an erroneous interpretation of, and pious reflec- 
tion upon, Isaiah vii. 14, since a matter requiring expla- 
nation comes first and explanation follows. We have 
shown how extremely unlikely it is that the narratives in 
Matthew and Luke could have been interpolations; that 
belief in his birth from a virgin was held by the primitive 
Church; and that Paul himself must have been acquainted 
with that faith. The facts show that he associated inti- 
mately with those who accepted it in full, and thus ac- 
quired a comprehensive knowledge of the faith held in 
the primitive Church in Jerusalem. 

It may appear to some minds, however, that the evi- 
dence thus far adduced to establish Paul’s knowledge of 
this belief is not yet entirely conclusive. Therefore, we 
will present fresh lines of proof based on the fact, for 
which Harnack is authority, that the Gospel of Luke “‘was 
written while Paul was still alive.” 

First, then, what proof or evidence amounting to a 


moral certainty is there that Paul ever saw that Gospel? 
124 


FINAL EVIDENCE 125 


In the previous chapter note was taken that the Epistle 
to the Colossians and the Epistle to Philemon indicate 
that Luke and Mark were both in Rome at the same time 
with Paul and some time after the Gospels of both these 
evangelists had been written. Is it not certain that copies 
of them would be in the possession of these evangelists 
in Rome and opportunity be given to Paul to read them? 
Aside from the inevitable answer which we would give 
to that question, it is clearly evident from Paul’s Epistles 
themselves that he was familiar with the contents of Luke’s 
Gospel long before his meeting with Luke and Mark in 
Rome. There is nothing remarkable in this. Luke was 
the apostle’s traveling companion; and it would be most 
natural and commonplace for Luke to inform him of the 
progress of his work from time to time as it grew under 
his hand. 

Now, it is a well understood principle that, when two 
writers on the same subject use identical terms in express- 
ing the same ideas, either one of them is copying the other 
or both are copying from a third document. For example, 
in the Epistle of Barnabas we read that Jesus ‘‘came not 
to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”” Plainly 
the author of that Epistle copied that sentence from Mat- 
thew ix. 13, Mark xi. 17 or Luke v. 32. This same 
Epistle contains the statement, ‘‘many are called but few 
are chosen.’’ By comparing the Greek of the Epistle word 
for word with the Greek of Matthew’s Gospel (xxii. 14) 
we find them to be alike, with the exception of one word 
(understood in the Epistle), and the conclusion follows 
that Barnabas is copying here from Matthew’s Gospel. 

The similar cases found when the Epistles of Clement 
and Polycarp are compared with Paul’s Epistles leave no 
possible ground for doubt that both Clement and Polycarp 


126 


quoted from the great apostle. 


DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


Thus, compare Clement 


with the Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians. 


Clem. 35. Casting off from us 
all unrighteousness and iniquity, 
tovetousness, strifes, malignities, 
and deceits, whisperings and 
backbitings, hatred of God, 
pride and arrogance, vainglory 
and inhospitality. For they that 
do these things are hateful to 
God; and not only they that do 
them, but they also that consent 
unto them. 


Clem. 36. Through Him our 
foolish and darkened mind 
springeth up into light. 


Clem. 46. Wherefore do we 
tear and rend asunder the mem- 
bers of Christ and stir up fac- 
tions against our own body and 

forget that we are mem- 
bers one of another? 


Clem. 38. Let each man be 
subject unto his neighbor. 


Clem. 46. Have we not one 
God and one Christ and Spirit 
.of grace that was shed upon us? 
And is there not one calling in 
Christ? 


Clem. 46. God .. . who 
chose the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
us through him for a peculiar 
people, 


Rom. i. 29-32. Being filled 
with all unrighteousness, wicked- 
ness, covetousness, maliciousness; 
full of envy, murder, strife, de- 
ceit, malignity; whisperers, back- 
biters, hateful to God, insolent, 
haughty, boastful. who, 
knowing the ordinance of God, 
that they which practice such 
things are worthy of death, not 
only do the same, but also con- 
sent with them that practice 
them. 


Rom. i. 21. Their foolish heart 
was darkened. 


Rom. xii. 5. So we, who are 
many are one body in Christ 
and severally members one of 
another. Also Eph. iv.-25. We 
are members one of another. 


Eph. v. 21. Subjecting your- 
selves one to another in the fear 
of Christ. 


Eph. iv. 3-6. There is one 
body and one Spirit, even as also 
ye were called in one hope of 
your calling; one Lord, one faith, 
one baptism, one God and Father 
of all. 


Eph. i. 4. He chose us in him 
before the foundation of the 
world, that we should be holy 
and without blemish before him 
in love. 


FINAL EVIDENCE 


127. 


Compare also the following from Polycarp to the 


Philippians: 


Poly. 3. ...Love toward God 
and Christ and toward our neigh- 
bor. For if any man be occupied 
with these, he hath fulfilled the 
commandment of righteousness; 
for he that hath love is far from 
all sin. 


Poly. 6. We must all stand at 
the judgment seat of Christ, and 
each man give an account of 
himself. 


Poly. 5. Neither fornicators, 
mor effeminate, nor abusers of 
themselves with men shall inherit 
the kingdom of God. 


Poly. 2. Now he who raised 
up him from the dead will raise 
us up also. 


Poly. 6. Taking thought al- 
ways for what is. honorable in 
the sight of God and men. 


Poly. 3.  Edified in the faith 
given to you, which is the mother 
of us all. 


Poly. 5. Knowing, then, that 
God is not mocked. 


Rom. xiii. 9, 10. If there be 
any other commandment, it is 
summed up in this word, namely, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself. Love worketh no ill to 
his neighbor; love therefore is 
the fulfillment of the law. 


Rom. xiv. 10, 12. We shall 
all stand before the judgment seat 
of God. - So then each one 
of us shall give account of him- 
self to God. Also II Cor. v. 10. 
For we must all be made mani- 
fest before the judgment seat of 
Christ, 


I Cor. vi. 9, 10. Neither 
fornicators, nor idolators, nor 
adulterers, nor effeminate, nor 


abusers of themselves with men 
- . . Shall inherit the kingdom 
of God. 


II Cor. iv. 14, He which 
raised up the Lord Jesus shall 
raise up us also. 


II Cor. viii, 21. We take 
thought for things honorable, 
not only in the sight of the Lord, 
but also in the sight of men. 
Also Rom. x. 17. Take thought 
for things honorable in the sight 
of all men. 


Gal. iv. 26. Jerusalem which 
is above is free, which is the 
mother of us all. 


Gal. vi. 7. Be not deceived; 
God is not mocked. 


128 


Poly. 12. Who shall believe on 
our Lord and God Jesus Christ, 
and his Father, who raised him 
from the dead. 


Poly. 1. Ye know that it is 
by grace ye are saved; not of 
works, but by the will of God, 
through Jesus Christ, 


DID PAUL KNOW OF 


Poly. 4. Let us arm ourselves 
with the armor of righteousness. 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


Gal. i. 1. Through Jesus 
Christ, and God the Father, who 
raised him from the dead. Also 
Col?isi, +12. 


Eph. ii. 8, 9. For by grace 
have ye been saved through 
faith; and that not of your- 
selves; it is the gift of God; not 
of works. 


Eph. vi. 13, 14. Take up the 
whole armor of God .. . hav- 


ing put on the breastplate of 
righteousness. Also II Cor. vi. 7. 


Eph. v. 21. Subjecting your- 
selves one to another. 


Poly. 10. 


one to another. 


Be ye all subject 


This assemblage of word for word agreements render 
the conclusion indisputable that both Clement and Poly- 
carp had read the Epistles of St. Paul. 

Close search has brought to light parallels of thought 
and language between certain of the Epistles in the New 
Testament, as for instance between I Peter and James. 
So exact are these as to convince critical readers that Peter 
was well acquainted with the Epistle to the Ephesians. 
And we know also that Peter thought Paul had written 
“some things hard to be understood,” which is clear evi- 
dence that he had read some of Paul’s writings. Let any 
one versed in Greek compare the Epistle of Jude with IT 
Peter and explain if he can the numerous similarities in 
these Epistles upon any other basis than that one is de- 
pendent upon the other. 

The critical investigator who has no interest to serve 
save to get at the truth will not object to the use of this 
principle in the present study. Apply it to Luke’s Gospel 
and the Pauline Epistles and it will compel an acceptance 
of the conclusion that Paul was well acquainted with 
Luke’s Gospel, and, therefore, that he did know of the 


FINAL EVIDENCE 129 


birth of Jesus from a virgin narrated in that Gospel. The 
similarities of thought, word and structure are in part as 
follows: 


Luke iv. 22. And wondered Col. iv. 6. Let your speech be 
at the gracious words. alway with grace. 


A closer translation of what the apostle really writes 
would read, ‘‘Let your speech always be gracious.” The 
hearers of our Lord wondered at the graciousness of his 
words, that is, his teaching. Had Paul never met this 
antithesis to John the Baptist’s brusqueness in Luke, 
would he have passed on to the Christians at Colossae this 
advice to imitate our Lord’s gentler manner? How other- 
wise shall we account for this striking similarity? Ex- 
pressing the same thought in the same words ceases to be 
a mere coincidence after a few repetitions such as these: 


Luke iv, 32. And they were I Cor. ii. 4. And my speech 
astonished at his doctrine for his and my preaching was not with 


word was with power. enticing words of man’s wisdom, 
but in demonstration and of 
power. 


Here the similarity is one of thought and _ structure 
“doctrine,” “‘preaching,’’ “‘words of power,” ‘‘power’— 
exactly the same ideas and relationships in both passages. 

Luke vi. 36. Be ye therefore II Cor. i. 3. The Father of 


merciful as your Father also is mercies and the God of all com- 
merciful, fort. 


Luke uses a particular Greek word for ‘‘merciful’’ here and 
uses it only this once in his Gospel. Paul, also, departs 
from common usage and employs this same term. The 
difference might be expressed in English by the terms, 
merciful and pitiful. 

This word of Luke signifies “‘to pity,’’ ‘‘to take com- 
passion” accompanied by an active desire to relieve the 
trouble. The commoner synonyms were less intensive 


130 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


in meaning. Why, then, was not one of the synonyms 
which are very common in the New Testament used in this 
particular text? And how does it happen that the only 
time Luke used ‘‘pitiful’’ as a predicate of the character of 
God, Paul should choose out of all other words signifying 
mercy, pity, compassion just this identical word in the 
same connection? Would he be likely to, if he had never 
heard of this saying of our Lord recorded in Luke? 


Luke x. 8. Eat such things I Cor. x. 27. Whatsoever is 
as are set before you. set before you, eat. 


Here, again, both writers use identical words to express 
identical ideas. Here, too, there are quite a number of 
synonyms of the phrase ‘‘to set before one,” which Paul 
might have used. Luke employs the verb “‘to set before’ 
four times in his Gospel and once in Acts xvi. 34. Mark 
also uses the same verb three times. 


Luke x. 21. Thou hast hid I Cor. i. 19. I will destroy 
these things from the wise and the wisdom of the wise and bring 
prudent. to naught the understanding of 

the prudent. 


Our Lord evidently states here as an accomplished fact 
what had been prophesied in Isaiah xxix. 14 would come 
to pass when God should do a marvelous work among the 
people. It will be noticed that the meaning of the Hebrew 
word for “‘hid’’ in Isaiah is retained by Luke, but that 
Paul departs from both the Hebrew and the LXX and 
substitutes another verb, “‘bring to naught.’’ No claim 
is made that there is direct evidence here that Paul is using 
Luke, but there is more than a passing suggestion that the 
one verse is an echo of the other. 


Luke xii. 42. Who then is I Cor. iv. 2. It is required in 
that faithful and wise steward? stewards that a man be found 
faithful. 


FINAL EVIDENCE 131 


Our Lord is speaking of the faithful steward to whom 
the care or oversight of his household shall be committed. 
The reference in Corinthians is reminiscent, as if Paul was 
taking his duty to heart as a steward of the mysteries of 
God and reminding himself that he must be faithful “‘to 
his trust.’* 


Luke vi. 39. Can the blind Rom. ii. 19. And art confi- 
lead the blind? dent that thou thyself art a guide 
to the blind. 


A number of verbs in Greek signify ‘‘to lead,’ but the 
one here chosen by Luke is rare in the New Testament, 
and the corresponding form of the noun which Paul uses 
for ‘“‘guide’”’ is equally rare. It is only found, indeed, in 
Matthew xv. 14, xxiii. 16-24 and Acts i. 16. 


Luke xxi. 24. Jerusalem shall Rom. ii. 25. Blindness in 
be trodden down of the Gentiles part hath happened unto Israel 
until the times of the Gentiles be until the fullness of the Gentiles 
fulfilled. be come in. 


Where else could Paul obtain this exact idea of the “‘full- 
ness of the Gentiles,’ which is so clearly but an echo of 
the words of the Lord, than from Luke’s Gospel? For 
this prophecy does not occur elsewhere in this form. To 
the reader of the Greek text, Paul’s language almost sug- 
gests literal copying from Luke. Another passage which 
seems to be reflected in Paul’s letter to the Colossians is: 


Luke viii. 15. Keep it [the Col. i. 10, 11. Being fruitful 


word] and bring forth fruit with .. . strengthened with all might 
Patience. - + » unto all patience and long 
suffering. 


Although a sufficient number of similarities of thought 
and expression have now been presented to prove that Paul 


132 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


was acquainted with the text of Luke’s Gospel, one more 
will be cited: 


Luke xi. 47-49. Ye build I Thess. xi. 15. Who both 
the sepulchers of the prophets killed the Lord Jesus, and their 
and your fathers killed them. . own prophets, and have perse- 
. . . I will send them prophets cuted us. 
and apostles and some of them 
they shall slay and persecute. 


How explain this conjunction of ideas otherwise than 
that the one passage is based on the other? Add now 
the fact that there are about one hundred words in the 
New Testament which are used only by Paul and Luke, 
and it would seem that the proof is well-nigh complete 
that Paul was acquainted with Luke’s Gospel. We have 
produced unquestionable evidence that Barnabas quoted 
Matthew and that Clement and Polycarp quoted from the 
Pauline Epistles. Evidence of the same order now lies 
before us in the case of the Gospel of Luke and certain 
Epistles of St. Paul. If the evidence in the cases of Clem- 
ent and Polycarp compels us to believe that these writers 
quoted from the apostle, this identical rule of evidence 
must force us to believe that Paul quoted from or was 
familiar with the contents of the Gospel of Luke. From 
this conclusion there is no escape. The same rule applies 
to all such instances, or it does not apply to any. But if 
Paul was acquainted with Luke’s Gospel, then Paul must 
have had knowledge of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, 


for it is with the narrative of that birth that Luke begins 
his Gospel. 


1It would be exceedingly interesting to present here from a French source further 
confirmation of the contention that Paul knew the teaching of Jesus, even his very 
words. We can only refer to the valuable work, L’apétre Paul et Jéus Christ, by 
Maurice Goguel, pp. 75-95. 


CHAPTER VII 
WuHy WAs PAUL SILENT? 


The logic of reason demands completeness. A beau- 
tiful statue, a finished poem or a piece of genuine oratory 
is a “thing of beauty and a joy forever’ because of the 
Satisfaction it gives to the desire for perfection. But a 
broken column, a headless bust or a “‘lame and impotent 
conclusion’”’ to a firmly wrought argument is a disappoint- 
ment both to reason and the artistic sense. 

This leads us to suspect that it may not be satisfactory 
to close the argument here without an attempt to answer 
in some way the additional question, Why was Paul silent 
concerning the birth of Jesus from a virgin? A similar 
situation confronts us in the case of other New Testament 
writers, Peter, John, Jude and James, since the extraordi- 
nary and altogether disconcerting result of all the labor 
of critical examination is the conclusion that those disciples 
of the Lord who must have known the facts as well, or 
better, than anyone else give no certain word of testimony 
for or against the historical statements of Matthew and 
Luke concerning the birth of Jesus, 

It is no solution of the question at all to affirm, as many 
do, that the reason these New Testament writers were 
silent is that the story of the birth of Jesus from a virgin 
was not known to the early Church. The evidence te- 
viewed here bars that way out. If, contrary to all that 
evidence, that assumption should be granted, still it cannot 
be denied that these writers were acquainted with the 
indubitable fact that both Matthew and Luke had related 
the circumstances of the birth in their Gospels and that 
these Gospels were known and read in the Church. The 

133 


134 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


apostle John, who knew and had made use of Luke’s 
Gospel,t did not deny, correct or modify any statement 
Luke had written. It is not likely that an apostle who 
had in his Epistles so sternly denounced other errors in 
regard to the true nature of Christ would, when writing 
his Gospel, have permitted by his silence a glaringly false 
statement concerning the incarnate Word to go to the 
whole Church. Must it also be assumed, rather than give 
up a prized theory, that neither Peter nor Jude nor James 
ever heard of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke? 

‘To assign with assurance any good reason for the silence 
of St. Paul concerning the birth of Jesus from a virgin is 
impossible. Paul himself has not spoken. And none of 
the apostles has spoken for him. Neither Luke, nor 
Barnabas, nor Sylvanus, nor Aristarchus, nor any of the 
other companions of the apostles has suggested a reason. 
No tradition nor documentary fragment coming down 
from the ancient Church gives us any clew. We simply 
do not know. As Grote in the Preface to his History of 
Greece says, ‘“‘Conscious and confessed ignorance is a better 
state of mind than the fancy, without the reality of 
knowledge.”’ The question, therefore, is open to conjec- 
ture, and out of any number of plausible reasons which 
invention may suggest we are free to select that one which 
seems to be the most probable. One thing only is certain. 
In the absence of any proof in favor, and much to the 
contrary, we are not at liberty to assume that the reason 
for Paul’s silence was ignorance. In the face of the facts 
previously presented, that assumption is not permissible. 

After all, may it not be that the negative inferences 
from Paul’s silence exaggerate it out of all proportion to 
its importance? Polemical necessities and the bias of unbe- 
lief, as well as the prejudice of ignorance, sometimes 


7On the relation of John’s Gospel to the Synoptists, see Moffatt, Introduction to 
the Literature of the New Testament. 


WHY WAS PAUL SILENT? 135 


magnify the accidental, and even the trivial, to vast pro- 
portions. It is characteristic of a certain type of mind to 
make mountains out of molehills. Elaborate theories have 
been spun with infinite skill from the small cocoon of 
single texts. 

It is not likely that Paul had any particular reason at 
all for his silence in regard to the birth of Jesus from a 
virgin. It may never have occurred to him that his silence 
would ever raise any question in the Church, for the very 
simple reason that the mode of birth of our Lord was not 
related to nor did it fit into any of the subjects he was 
writing about to his recently organized churches. 

In a study of this question it should be kept in mind 
that the early churches were not established by means of 
the written Gospels, but through the oral preachings of 
the apostles. Not until several years after the churches 
had been organized could the written Gospels have been 
used as textbooks for catechetical instruction. The Gospel 
of Luke was sent to a convert, the excellent Theophilus, 
who had already been “‘instructed’’ in the historical mate- 
rial of the new religion before he had ever seen a written 
Gospel, except perhaps one of those inadequate booklets 
written by the ‘“‘many’’ to whom Luke refers in his 
Preface. The apostolic Epistles themselves were not 
known in all the churches at the same time. Paul was 
acquainted with the Gospel Luke had written and also 
with that of Mark, but it does not follow that at this time 
Luke’s Gospel was known and read in all the churches 
which the apostles had founded. 

That the historical facts in the life of Jesus of which 
they were witnesses was the basis of this preaching is 
everywhere evident in the Book of Acts. Examples of 
these historical discourses, mere outlines, of course, are the 
preaching of Peter before Cornelius? and the discourse of 


~ 2 Acts x, 37-4. 


136 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


Paul in the Synagogue at Antioch.? But the one out- 
standing fact given prominence in all the apostolic preach- 
ing was the resurrection of Jesus. There was little time 
for narrating and explaining every detail of the Redeemer’s 
life, especially those connected with his birth, childhood 
and youth, for they had no vital and immediate relation 
to the supreme fact of human redemption through Christ 
Jesus. 

Paul was a missionary and his themes were missionary 
themes. His mind was occupied with great theologies like 
sin, atonement, world-redemption, conscious fellowship 
with Christ, Christian conduct in a pagan environment. 
These were his subjects. There was no more occasion for 
him to introduce the mode of Jesus’ birth into his dis- 
courses upon these subjects than there was for Peter to do 
so in his general epistle on Christian duties, or for Jude 
in his exhortation to steadfastness in the faith, or for James 
in his discussion of faith and good works. 

At what point could Paul have introduced the mode of 
Jesus’ birth into his Epistles with any relevancy to the 
particular subject he was discussing? His Epistles are before 
us and we may try to choose a spot where such a reference 
would fit in, if we will. Let the experiment be tried then. 
Even literary critics, experts in the art of detecting interpo- 
lations, or in the reconstruction of texts, will find it 
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible—provided they are 
fair to the apostle—to introduce the mode of Jesus’ birth 
into the argument of any of his Epistles without arresting 
the thought of the apostle, or inserting an irrelevant digres- 
sion, or rearranging his ideas, or forcing to the front a 
discussion of a subject for which no occasion whatever 
had arisen in any of the churches to which he was writing. 

In all the Epistles of Paul there seem to be two places 
only where the context furnishes opportunity for specific 


®Ibid., xiii, 23-31. 


WHY WAS PAUL SILENT? 137 


mention of our Lord’s birth from a virgin. These two 
passages are Romans i. 3, 4 and Galatians iv. 4. The first 
reads: “Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord who 
was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. And 
declared to be the Son of God with power according to the 
Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.’’ 

In this quotation the apostle asserts the human and the 
divine nature of Jesus our Lord. He is teaching, and his 
instruction is that, while Jesus was a human resident of 
earth, the divine in Him was the preexistent Son of God, 
which fact was later demonstrated by his resurrection from 
the dead. This is the exact thought which the apostle 
evidently wishes to convey. Let us try now to show how 
the apostle might mention specifically here the fact of a 
virgin birth, and let the text be made to read: ““‘Who was 
born of a virgin according to the flesh and declared to be 
the Son of God with power,’’ etc. The question then 
immediately arises: Just how does this specific reference 
to the fact of the birth of Jesus from a virgin strengthen 
the argument here for the reality of the human nature of 
our Lord? ‘The antithesis sought to be emphasized is 
the human over against his divine nature. Paul asserts 
the reality of both, and therefore the only purpose that 
introducing the supernatural birth of Jesus from a ‘‘virgin’”’ 
would serve is to cloud his statement of the real humanity 
of Jesus, confuse the issue and suggest a Docetic view of 
our Lord’s human nature. The apostle avoids this diffi- 
culty by declaring that Jesus was ‘‘born of the seed of 
David,’’ purposely omitting reference to an earthly father 
which we should expect him to mention in antithesis to 
the divine Father in the context, if there had been an 
earthly father. Any similar attempt elsewhere will only 
reveal the more clearly, as the experiment will prove, that 
we cannot interpolate the birth of Jesus from a virgin into 
Paul’s sentences without essentially changing the exact 


138 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


thought or shade of meaning the apostle had at the mo- 
ment in mind. 

For instance, take the Galatian text. This reads: “But 
when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his 
Son, made of a woman under the law, etc.’’ Paul could 
have written made of “earthly parents,’’ were such the 
fact according to his understanding, but nowhere does he 
ever suggest such an idea. What he did write was that 
God, as the causal agent, sent his Son into the world, being 
delivered of a ‘“‘woman.”” Now, for “woman” let us 
substitute “‘virgin,’’ as it is plausible to suppose that Paul 
would have done had he known of the birth of Jesus from 
a virgin. The reason becomes apparent at once why this 
change will not do, because the fact that Jesus was made 
or born of a ‘‘virgin’’ is of little or no use in establishing 
the position that He was made ‘‘under the law,’”’ and this 
relation to the law is the specific idea which Paul wishes 
here to express. Why refer, then, at all in this connection 
to his birth from a “‘virgin’’? Would the statement that 
Jesus was ‘‘made of a virgin’”’ help put Him in the thought 
of the Galatians more clearly and actually under the juris- 
diction of the Mosaic Law, and therefore more “‘like unto 
his brethren’? Paul here declares the preexistence of the 
Holy One by his use of the term “‘sent,’’ but, as in Romans 
i. 3-4, he wants also to declare the reality of the humanity 
of Jesus with which the preexistent Son was united, and 
this he does by declaring that Jesus was born of a 
“woman.” 

It seems probable, then, that reference to the birth of 
Jesus from a virgin could not have been introduced with- 
out interfering with the great themes he was discussing. 

The explanation thus given is not completely satisfac- 
tory, and the demand for a more convincing reason may 
still linger in many minds. Happily, we are not shut up 
to this one line of explanation, though it should receive 


WHY WAS PAUL SILENT? 139 


full weight in any consideration of the subject. If, there- 
fore, we felt forced to deal in conjecture, too, we would 
venture to suggest that, if the apostle had any reason at 
all for his consistent silence on the subject of the birth of 
Jesus from a virgin, it was a prudential reason. 
Christianity was an absolutely new religion. It came 
into a world already grown old in sin, into a world alien 
to it in thought, in speech, in belief and life and view of 
the universe. The moral darkness of milleniums had so 
blinded the spiritual perception in the men of that world 
that, when the pure and holy truths of Christianity were 
announced, they aroused antagonism on the ground that 
they were unphilosophical, contrary to human nature and 
inimical to the stability of the State. The Supreme God 
was either neglected or was lost among multitudes of 
deities. In every nation gods and goddesses, born of fear, 
or of poetic imaginings, or of human depravity, the out- 
come of blind philosophies or of obscene cults—a conse- 
quence of the blending of Grecian art and culture with 
Asiatic mysticism—chaotically mingled in the religious 
thought and daily life of the people. Especially in the 
Greco-Roman Empire was it true that, the more deeply the 
inner life, the social habits and religious customs of the 
people became saturated with these legends of the gods and 
these stories of mythical heroes descended from the gods, 
the less susceptible and responsive the people became to 
even the faint glimmerings of truth shining here and there 
in the moral teaching of their philosophers. Philosophy 
had lost its moral power. In the very age in which Chris- 
tianity appeared, Strabo, the geographer, as cited by 
Neander, tells us that ‘““The great mass of the inhabitants 
of the cities are excited to good by means of agreeable 
fables, when they hear the poets narrating in a fabulous 
manner the deeds of heroes; such as, for instance, the labors 
of Hercules or Theseus, or the honors bestowed on men 


140 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


by the gods . . . for the great mass of women and the 
promiscuous multitudes of people cannot be led to piety 
by philosophical reasoning, but for that purpose super- 
stition is requisite, which cannot be supported without 
miraculous stories and prodigies.”’ 

Every nation had its own gods, legends and customs, 
but in the migrations of the various peoples from one 
country or locality to another these had migrated, also, 
to other peoples, and under new names and similar forms 
of worship became domiciled among them.* In this man- 
ner the moral conceptions associated in one religion after 
another with the worship of its gods also spread to other 
nations. The worship of Isis in Egypt became for a while 
established in Rome, notwithstanding the laws enacted 
against the introduction of foreign deities and modes of 
worship.’ The vilest characters which pornographic poets 
revelling in lubricity could conceive were attributed to 
these divine beings, and, notwithstanding the effort of 
the philosophers to interpret these erotic descriptions as 
symbolical of natural phenomena, corrupt humanity found 
it easier to follow the examples of the gods than to under- 
stand the interpretations of the philosophers.* Fallen 
human nature is ever inclined to follow the line of least 
resistance. Long before Paul wrote the seventh chapter of 
Romans, Ovid, a Roman poet, had uttered the cry, “I 
know and approve the better way, but follow the worse.” 

With what withering sarcasm does the Christian apolo- 
gist of that day expose the frightful immoralities of these 
mythical deities and divine heroes! Neptune soiled the 


*See Virgil. “Brought his gods to Latium, whence the Latin race,”” etc. Heroditus 
tells us, ‘‘From the Pelasgians the Hellenes took their gods. But whence each of the 
gods comes, whether they were always there, what their form is, we Hellenes only 
know as it were yesterday. For it is Hesiod and Homer in the first place who created 
for the Greeks their race of gods, who gave the gods their names, distributed honors 
and arts among them and described their forms. 

®See Leckey, History of European Morals, Vol. I, p. 263, Note; also Mommsen, 
History of Rome, Bk. III, Chap. XIII. 

®See Leckey, History of European Morals, p. 167. 


WHY WAS PAUL SILENT? 141 


virgin purity of Amphitrite, Manaloppe and Enymone; 
Apollo desired Arsinoe, Sterope and Daphne; Saturn, 
caught in adultery, changed himself into a beast to escape 
detection by his heavenly spouse; Jupiter, the ‘Father of 
Gods’’ and men, assumed countless forms in the ardor of 
his lusts. ‘‘Hercules,’’ says the Christian Arnobius, with 
a wilting sneer, ‘Hercules, a holy god, violated the daugh- 
ters of Thestius.”” Female deities also were guilty of 
illicit love. Aurora sighed for Tithonius; Venus for 
Anchius; Tuna for Endymion; Proserpina for Adonis; 
Ceres for Vulcan, Phaeton and Mars. 

Such were the legends and amatory exploits of the im- 
mortal gods sung by the poets and wandering minstrels 
to the multitudes from time immemorial. Embodied in 
symbol, sanctified by religion and glorified in art, these 
myths entered so profoundly into the religious, social and 
political life of the people that today there is scarcely to 
be found in the excavations of buried cities a single utensil 
or adornment of public or domestic life—cooking vessel, 
drinking cup, vase, work of genius in marble or in bronze, 
broken pedestal, pillar or fragment from house or temple 
—that does not recall some one of these obscene legends 
and poetic myths. 

This was the world into which Paul carried the holy 
teachings of Jesus. It was by secession from such a world 
‘that the Gentile Churches arose. It was not an easy task, 
then, as it is not in heathen missions today, in the first 
generation of these churches to wholly eradicate from 
memory and imagination the baneful hereditary effects and 
the acquired habits of a previous life steeped in paganism. 
‘The sad reversion to former modes of debauchery, which 
the apostle in his Epistle to the Church at Corinth so 
severely condemns and endeavors to remedy, illustrates the 
tendency among the Gentile-Christians against which he 
was always on guard, for, judging from his continual 


142 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


exhortations to constancy in all his correspondence, it was 
not solely confined to the church at Corinth. Now, it was 
to just such Christians, men and women but recently res- 
cued from moral darkness, that Paul wrote his immortal 
epistles. 

Quite true, these churches were not composed wholly 
of converted pagans. Hellenized Jews, who believed in 
Jesus as the Messiah of God, formed the nucleus of every 
new Christian community. But they were only a nucleus; 
the majority were Gentiles. These Gentiles found it hard 
to shake off the local deities of their respective religions 
for good, nor, while their will was good to repudiate them, 
could they wholly free themselves from the spell of the 
fabulous stories of the old gods. It was common report, 
which Alexander himself encouraged, that he was not the 
son of Philip, but of Zeus, who in the form of a serpent 
visited his mother. The Emperor Augustus was said to 
have been begotten by the god Apollo while his mother 
was asleep in the temple. Sir William Ramsay’ relates 
that in the ruins of Comana in Pisidia there still lies a 
milestone with the inscription: 

The Emperor Caesar, Son of a god, Pontifex Maximus. 
To show how widely extended was the vogue of such 
beliefs, Deissman® says, ‘‘Five fragments of marble pedestal 
from Pergamum bear this inscription, which was put up 
in honor of Augustus while he was still alive: 

The Emperor Caesar, Son of a god, the god Augustus 

of Every Land and Sea, the Overseer.’’® 

In this same work, this distinguished archeologist states 
that “In an official inscription the town council of Ephe- 
sus, in conjunction with other Greek cities in Asia, spoke 
of Julius Caesar who was their Dictator as ‘the God made 
manifest, offspring of Ares and Aphrodite, and common 


™The Church in the Roman Empire. 
® Light from the Ancient East. 
° Ibid., p. 348. 


WHY WAS PAUL SILENT? 143 


savior of human life.’ ’’1° Plato was said to be the off- 
spring of a god; Hercules was the son of Jupiter and 
Alamena, daughter of Electrion, King of Argos; Hermione, 
who married Cadmus and was later translated to the 
Elysian Fields, was the daughter of Venus and Archises: 
Aesculapius was the son of Apollo and Coronis—and 
thus might one continue to cite the popular legends of the 
birth of distinguished personages, male and female, be- 
gotten by gods of mortal mothers. 

Would it have been prudent, then, for the apostle Paul 
in his Epistles to Gentile converts to present to them the 
story of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, at the risk that 
they in their ignorance would understand that he meant 
to say that Jesus was another offspring of a god through 
a mortal mother? Such a declaration in all probability 
would not only have added in their minds simply one 
more to the number of stories of miraculous births of 
which their former religion was full, but would have also 
afforded possible grounds for a revival of half-way belief 
in these pagan legends. Moreover, it would seem to them 
to reduce the historical facts of the birth of the eternal 
Son of God to an infamous equality with the transactions 
recorded in the fables and legends of gods and extraordi- 
nary men with which these converts were already too 
familiar, a possibility to be contemplated with horror. 

Not only so, but these recent converts, unlike the 
Jewish-Christians, had no inherited background of mono- 
theism to restrain them. It would have been easy for them 
to accept the story of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, 
since it would have caused no shock to their former beliefs. 
But all the holy truths of Christianity which Paul had 
preached would also have suffered debasement by this asso- 
ciation of ideas. These truths would all have been vitiated 
through and through by false conceptions of the Christ, 


19 Jbid., p. 348. 


144 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


his person and mission, and of the nature of the revelation 
of God through Him to the human race. No part of the 
revelation of God can suffer debasement without destroy- 
ing the purity and divinity of the whole. No religion 
which gave shelter to fables and legends at the core of it, 
however moral its maxims or philosophical its reasonings, 
could have exercised a regenerating influence on the soul of 
the Gentile world. 

Paul was a wise builder. Scholar, thinker, mystic, yet 
a citizen of the world, no saner head than his sat on the 
shoulders of any man of that age. All students of his 
writings are impressed by his tact, his spiritual insight, his 
clear perception of the necessary relations between cause 
and effect in the moral progress of men and nations, his 
lofty conceptions of the Christ and of his significance in 
human history, his constructive ability in organization 
and his Christlike tenderness in composing discordant ele- 
ments. In him were united the zeal of the preacher, the 
caution of the philosopher, the comprehensive vision of 
the man of the world, and the clear apprehension of the 
remedies the world needed with the foresight of the states- 
man, the raptures of the saint, the courage of the martyr 
and the courtesy of a gentleman. 

Paul was a prudent teacher. He wrote the Corinthians 
openly that he had fed them with milk as babes must be 
fed, and not with meat because they could not digest it. 
It is not likely that he would, nor would we expect him 
to, go beyond the capacity of his converts, in violation of 
his own rule of giving to each his meat in due season— 
of giving milk to babes, and the meat of wisdom to them 
that are perfected. Prudence in teaching is as necessary as 
prudence in diet. If, as Sir William Ramsay"! says, “Paul 
well knew that there is a time for everything, and that 
only among those that are full grown should he speak 


“The Teaching of St. Paul in the Terms of the Present Day, p. 109. 


WHY WAS PAUL SILENT? 145 


philosophy.” Again, he says, ‘‘Most dangerous as it was 
to talk philosophically among the Corinthians, a middle- 
class audience who possessed that half education or quarter 
education which was worse than a lesser degree of educa- 
tion combined with a greater rustic sympathy with 
external nature,”’!? how much more impossible it would 
have been for him to have referred in passing to the birth 
of Jesus from a virgin in his Epistles to the Corinthians, 
to the Thessalonians and to the Galatians, respectively — 
which would not have been easy to do in a sentence— 
without reviving in the minds of his readers the fables of 
the gods and leading them to institute comparisons and 
analogies between the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and 
the legends they had repudiated! This reason of prudence 
may, therefore, lay claim to a certain degree of probability 
as a reason for the silence of St. Paul on this subject. 

Furthermore, had the apostle in his Epistles departed 
from the specific purpose for which they were written by 
entering upon a justification of the mode of Christ’s en- 
trance into the world—the way was open to him to do so 
in Romans i. 3, 4, and Galatians iv. 4, 5—he would not 
only have risked the undesirable consequences among the 
Gentiles above mentioned, but he would have started 
another and most serious controversy with the intermed- 
dling Jews with whom he was in ceaseless debate to the 
day of his death, 


If the proclamation of the supernatural birth 
(says Allen) would have lowered Christian doctrine 
in the eyes of the pagan world, so it would have led 
to debate which would have been distasteful and 
painful to Christian reverence. At a very early 
period Jewish caricatures of the story of the super- 
natural birth were current. They may already under- 


22 Ibid., p. 109. 


146 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


lie Mark vi. 3, and more probably are reflected in 
Matthew i. 15-25. And wherever Christianity 
spread, Jewish misrepresentation followed it. If the 
proclamation of the supernatural birth would have 
encouraged on the one hand a semi-pagan conception 
of the Messiah, so on the other it would have pro- 
voked Jewish slander of the most offensive kind. The 
silence of St. Paul may well be due partly to his 
common sense which enabled him to see that there 
were wise ways and unwise ways of presenting the 
facts of Christianity to the world (pearls were not 
to be cast before swine) and partly to that highly 
developed Christian reverence and modesty which 
also marks the narratives of the Gospels.*® 


The conclusion reached by this universally acknowl- 
edged scholar and commentator on Matthew in this most 
critical of Commentaries is: ‘““The alleged silence of St. 
Paul seems, therefore, to be no sufficient argument against 
the existence of the tradition of the supernatural birth in 
Palestine during his lifetime.”’ 

If so much trouble would have followed the introduc- 
tion of the subject in the Epistles of St. Paul, why, it may 
be asked, did not the same trouble follow from the publi- 
cation of the narratives of the mode of Jesus’ birth in the 
Gospels of Matthew and Luke? 

This is a very plausible point to raise. The answer to 
it, however, is, we believe, complete and in close agreement 
with the facts. Matthew’s Gospel was written for Jewish- 
Christians. "They would be well versed in the writings of 
the Old Testament; they had always believed in one Holy 
God of infinite purity, a conception to which no pagan 
ever attained. Behind these Jewish-Christians were ages 
of religious history into which at various times and in 


38 Commentary on Matthew, 


WHY WAS PAUL SILENT? 147 


different ways this one Holy God had previously projected 
Himself for redemptive purposes. Their Scriptures also 
had pointed out the coming in a supernatural manner of 
the Anointed of God who should redeem Israel and be a 
light unto the Gentiles. These Jewish converts would 
not have their faith affected injuriously unless they came 
to share in the Ebionitic heresy concerning the divine 
nature of Jesus by accepting belief in the agency of the 
Holy Spirit in the birth of the Messiah Jesus. For stand- 
ing there before them in their sacred Scriptures were 
accounts of other divinely influenced births such as those 
of Samuel and Samson and Gideon, which had occurred in 
the course of their national history. 

Luke wrote his Gospel for the personal instruction of 
his friend or patron Theophilus, As was the custom of 
Greek and Roman writers at that time, he addressed him 
by name at the beginning of his work. Theophilus was 
a man of education and high social position, as his title 
“Most Excellent’’ suggests.14 Through this nobleman 
Luke intended to reach the circles of Christians in the fel- 
lowship of the Church with whom Theophilus associated. 
It is very evident, notwithstanding Zahn’s labored objec- 
tion, that this man was a Christian. Indeed, it would be 
very strange if Luke should associate with such a precious 
document the name of any man, however excellent, who 
was not a Christian. Unlike the majority of the mixed 
multitude who sought salvation in the Church, Theophi- 
lus was a man of culture and therefore was more able to 
weigh and judge critically the narrative of our Lord’s 
birth in the light of the character of the Gospel as a 
whole, and the life and teaching of Jesus of whom the 
supernatural birth was affirmed. 

As a man of culture, that Preface would deeply impress 
him by its crystal clearness, seriousness and sincerity. He 


See Acts xxiii, 26; xxiv. 25. 


148 DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 


would expect in a work so introduced the critical exact- 
ness and thoroughness of a competent historian, down- 
right intellectual honesty and the convictions of a man 
who knew the facts. Expecting such qualities, Theophilus 
could not but see that this narrative was not another case 
of the common practice of historians and biographers of 
exploiting for the populace the supernatural births of 
extraordinary men. It was too simple and yet too di- 
vinely lofty to be classed with such fantasies. It was too 
pure, too naively innocent, too reticent in its modest reveal- 
ments, to have been the product of lustful brains. Its 
heavenly character fitted in too well with the sublime life 
of Him for whom no birth from a virgin could enhance 
the spiritual grandeur of his mission. It was too convinc- 
ing to have been an invention. Theophilus, the man of 
thought and understanding, must have seen that no neces- 
sity could have arisen for the invention of such a birth, 
since such a life, unparalleled in human history and infi- 
nitely superior to that ascribed to the highest gods of the 
pagan pantheons, was vastly more convincing evidence of 
the divine character of Jesus than any invented story of a 
supernatural birth could possibly have been. 

Moreover, Theophilus was an instructed Christian. He 
was grounded in the facts of the Christian faith and would 
not be confused by fresh reference to the spiritual origin 
of the Founder of the faith. (Luke knows that he had 
received instruction, for he says: “I write unto thee in 
order [for the purpose, or intent] most excellent The- 
ophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those 
things wherein thou hast been instructed,’ that is, not 
merely informed, but catechized. 

Catechetical instruction, common in those days, was 
“a mouth to mouth’ recital of memorabilia concerning 
Jesus. Luke’s account of the birth of our Lord could 
not, therefore, have been new to Theophilus. It was of 


WHY WAS PAUL SILENT? 149 


its ‘‘certainty’’ that Luke desired to convince Theophilus, 
not to impart something wholly new. For this reason 
Luke goes into details of the facts and is as minute as the 
critical Theophilus, who wanted to know all the facts 
“from the beginning,’ could reasonably desire. 

We have now gone over the whole ground of argument 
in as clear and brief a manner as we are able, to show the 
the unreasonableness of the assumption that Paul’s silence 
concerning the birth of Jesus from a virgin was due to his 
ignorance of that birth. To the candid judgment of earn- 
est inquirers, whether or no they are believers in the virgin 
birth of our divine Lord and Savior, the evidence in the 
case is now submitted, with the hope that its appeal to 
reason will strengthen the wavering and firmly establish 
the faith of those who despite all denials still believe in 
the veracity of the Gospel concerning Him who was con- 
ceived of the Holy Ghost born of the virgin Mary. 


INDEX I 


‘Allen on date of Gospels, 23 
On Silence of St. Paul, 146 
Argument againt Lobstein, 82 
Aristides, Apology of, 22 
Athenagoras on Myths, 62 
Beyschlag on Nature of Christ, 27 
Bossuet on Divinity of Jesus, 27 
ite Companion of Paul, 
1 
Church in Jerusalem, 24 
Cheyne on Parallels to Virgin 
Birth, 55 
Sees Sinlessness of, 114, 116, 
11 
Dalman on Septuagint, 111 
yaa of Apostolic Fathers, 
12 
Doctrine and the Virgin Birth 
Ebionites, 42, 68, 69, 72, 94 
Eusebius, historian, 68 
Exegetes on Isaiah vii, 14. 
Christian Interpretation, 112 
Feine on Paul’s Knowledge of 
Jesus, note, 105 
Gladstone, Mary, letter to, 65 
Grote, historian, quoted, 58 
Godet on Luke, 77 
Greek texts, value of, 21 
Harnack on Myths, 66 
on date of Mark’s Gospel, 
on date of Luke, 71, 108 
theory of origin of belief 
in Virgin Birth, 81 
Heathen Morality, 140 
Hellenism in Early Church, 30 
Horror of ‘Myths in Early 
Church, 30 
Interpolation Theory, 91 
Ignatius, letters of, 95 
Isaiah’s Prophecy, 81, 111 
Jesus, inquiry about, 34 
ee : Gospel and Virgin Birth, 


Justin Martyr on Myths, 98 

Jae Theodor, on Greek Texts, 

Lecky, historian, note, 140 

Luke’s Narrative, 44, 75 

Lobstein’s Theory, criticism of, 
74, 81 

Logia, origin of, 33 

MacKintosh on Early Chapters of 
‘Matthew and Luke, 77 

Miracles not impossible, 51 

Misinterpretation Theory, criti- 
cism of, 80 

Mary, object of reverence, 32, 
36, 41 

Moffatt on Fourth Gospel, 122 

Mommsen, historian, note, 14 

Myths not in Early Church, 30, 


Mythical Theory, 63 
Nature of Evidence, 11 
Objections to Belief in Virgin 
Birth, 52 
Oehler on Isa., 90 
Paul’s Knowledge of Virgin Birth, 
47, 107 
of Jesus, note, 105 
on Myths, 60, his silence on 
supposed Myths, 64 
Paul and the Primitive Church, 
100 
sand BS Evangelists in Rome, 
Paul’s Character, 144 
Parkman, historian, quoted, 22 
Peake, Professor, on Isa., 89 
Pfleiderer on Nature of Jesus, 27 
Polycarp, Bishop, 99 
pene Sir William, on Paul, 
Relations of Paul and Luke, 129 
Renan on Character of Luke’s 
Gospel, 69, 77 


151 


152 


Sanday, Professor, on dates of 
Gospel, 23. 

Schiirer on Heathenism in Pales- 
tine, 30 

Schmidt on Divinity of Jesus, 27 

Seeberg, History of Dogma, 28 

Sinlessness of Jesus and the Virgin 
Birth, 114 

Theophilus, 
Luke, 148 

Time Element, 65, 83 

Usener, Article in Ency. Biblica, 
criticism of, 91 


Correspondent of 


INDEX 


Virgin Birth, origin of belief in, 


date of belief, 69 
silence of New ‘Testament 
on importance of, 10 
primitive belief in, 18, 28 
Weizsicher on Virgin Birth, 18 
Weiss, Bernhard, on Nature of 
Christ, 1.17 
Weiss, Johannes, 
62 
Wernle, theory of, 62 
Zah; on Luke’s Gospel, 106 


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